What became of the Thatcher revolution: lessons for Australia

FOREWORD

Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979 after five years of the Labour governments of Wilson and Callaghan.  Ever since the war, both major parties had in government pursued strongly interventionist economic and social policies aimed at sustaining the welfare state in a mixed economy.  By 1979 it was hard to believe that these policies would succeed.  Although most people's standard of living had improved between the 1950s and the early 1970s, there had been little improvement since;  and Britons, long used to the sight of rich Americans, now had to endure rich French, Germans, Japanese and Arabs.  Economic and social rot had set in.

In these circumstances, the radical Toryism espoused by Mrs Thatcher seemed to many people more like a cleansing gale than a mere breath of fresh air.  She would sever the sprawling tentacles of the state, cut down overweening and over-mighty union barons, stop inflation, restore family values, halve taxation, achieve full employment and build some aircraft carriers.  (Some people in Australia may, just, be able to recall a similar feeling of glad confident morning when Malcolm Fraser was swept into office in December 1975 with what amounted to a mandate to undo the policies of Whitlam.)

Nearly seven years after the Thatcher triumph, less has been achieved than was promised.  The government now appears to have lost impetus if not direction.  The general election due in 1988 is already casting its shadow into the Cabinet room.

Australia faces many of the same problems as Britain.  The economy is rigid and uncompetitive in many areas, and the welfare and tax systems sap incentive.  Policies similar to Mrs Thatcher's are needed to release Australians' productive and entrepreneurial talents.  How do we implement them when the "Iron Lady", so often seems unable to?

Richard Wood here looks at the achievements and failures of the Thatcher government, and draws lessons for Australia.

John Nurick

WHAT BECAME OF THE THATCHER REVOLUTION:
LESSONS FOR AUSTRALIA

This is my first visit to Western Australia.  I landed at Perth in "winter" and now understand why Western Australia is called the "lucky state"!  I can only say as a visiting Cane Toad that there can be no excuse for whinging about the "severity" of the Perth "winter", the generous hospitality of my hosts and of all whom I have met, or about the scenic qualities of the environment, both of city and countryside.

Looking at the economic experience of the last two decades, however, Australia seems to have become a somewhat less lucky country.  I have noted that in 1958 Australia was the fifth richest OECD country in per capita terms, but that it has now slipped to nearly 20th in the ranking.

Clearly the "British disease" of relative economic decline is not confined to the United Kingdom.  Australian experience would tend to suggest the contrary:  that the British disease, rather like AIDS, has the ability to develop and spread rather rapidly in a new host.  Fundamentally, this is because if a country adopts the same general sort of economic and social policies as those which led to Britain's decline -- and also has many cultural and institutional similarities with the UK, as Australia does -- then the same outcomes will generally obtain.  Under similar circumstances, similar (misguided) policies tend to produce similar consequences.

Britain was, of course, the first "lucky country" in the economic sense, in that it achieved the first industrial revolution.

Not much more than a century ago, Britain had the highest standard of living in the world -- higher even than Australia's -- and produced two-thirds of the world's energy.  Britain then produced half the total world output of cotton cloth and of iron, and was the predominant exporting nation in the world economy.  The City of London was the undisputed and unparalleled centre of world finance.

Although the relative decline of the UK was inevitable as other economies grew and caught up, the pace of the decline since the Second World War may only be described as catastrophic.  In 1979, the then British Ambassador in Paris wrote a secret valedictory dispatch to his master the Foreign Secretary, noting that:

income per head in Britain is now, for the first time for over 300 years, below that in France ... [T]he prognosis for the foreseeable future is discouraging.  If present trends continue we shall be overtaken in Gross Domestic Product per head by Italy and Spain well before the end of the century.

Since coming to power as Prime Minister in 1979, Mrs Margaret Thatcher has sought to reverse the decline of Britain by tackling its causes.  What lessons may usefully be drawn from the experience of Britain under the governance of Mrs Thatcher if Australia is to tackle its own version of the British disease with success?  It is this question that I want to address.

THE BRITISH DISEASE

What has been the nature of the British disease in Britain?  There have been several key features.

• First, sluggish and indeed slowing economic growth, most especially noticeable in the 1970s but discernible at least since the war.
• Second, creeping, sometimes mounting to galloping, inflation.  In 1974 we hit a peak of nearly 30 per cent inflation of wages, and over 20 per cent increase in the price level.  Again in 1980 we had a 20 per cent per annum inflation rate.
• A third thing which became very prominent during the 70s in Britain was the growth of government spending and taxation, leading to a fiscal and international borrowing crisis in 1975-76.
• A fourth factor involved in the British disease which became very prominent in the 1970s was the abuse of trade union power.  Britain currently has a lower level of unionisation (approximately 45 per cent of the workforce) than Australia (approximately 55 per cent), but it is highly unionised compared to France or the United States.

I think all of these things are also general features of the sort of problems Australia has been suffering over the past 10 to 15 years.  Another similarity of the 1970s situation in Britain with what is happening in Australia today is that between 1974 and 1979 the UK had a sort of Accord between the Government and the unions.  In Britain it was called the Social Contract but essentially it was a corporatist policy similar to the present Accord in Australia.  I would predict now that the Accord in this country will eventually break down as it did in Britain.  The pressures are that such an agreement between unions and government must break down because it is a contract which is unenforceable.  There are too many parties to such an unenforceable contract for it ever to be a workable policy in the long run.

Another initial point that must be mentioned, and to which I shall return, is that a central way in which the tide was turned in Britain was through the power of ideas.  The institute of Economic Affairs was set up in 1957 as an educational and research institute, and it took about two decades (I'm sorry to say) to get new -- and indeed old -- truths about the workings of the economy into circulation in the media and also into the minds of politicians.  One seemingly so influenced by the Institute of Economic Affairs was a certain Margaret Thatcher.

Against this background of rising taxation, rising government spending, slowing economic growth, a "social contract" which was not working, and the abuse of trade union power in Britain during the 1970s, Mrs Thatcher came to power in 1979 on a tide of resentment against those phenomena and with new ideas circulating in the political market.  Her major policies were quite explicit (at least as developed in platform rhetoric).  She intended to roll back the Leviathan State, to cut government spending, to quell inflation by monetary control, to cut taxation, to deregulate the economy and check -- if not reverse -- the growth of union power.

SOME LESSONS OF THE THATCHER EXPERIENCE

What I shall do now is provide you with a potted history of what actually happened so that some of the lessons may be learned in advance here.  Eventually the same general sort of policies will undoubtedly have to be tried in Australia.  There is only one cure for the British disease, just as there is only cure for smoking.  If you want to stop smoking you have to give up smoking.  If you wanl to stop the British disease you have got to give up the policies which lead to it.  That holds true for Britain and Australia and all other countries.

So let me tell in brief what has happened in the UK since 1979.  It has been a matter of both success and failure;  a mixed bag.  Quite obviously not everything goes right in politics as in other aspects of human life.

The first episode of Thatcher government was her first term as Prime Minister, from 1979 to 1983.  She had a fairly decent majority of over 40 in the House of Commons of over 600 seats.  The first and principal goal the Government set itself was to try to stop (or at least considerably reduce) inflation, and to this end the government announced a "medium-term financial strategy" in 1980.  This meant the adoption of a pre-announced, phased reduction in monetary growth targets and the size of the budget deficit, over a four year period.

What actually happened was a bit mixed on this front.  On the side of monetary policy, it proved more difficult to control monetary aggregates than had previously been assumed to be possible.  Roughly speaking, however, most of the main money aggregates were brought down, ⁽¹⁾ and the inflation rate as a result was brought down from a high of just on 20 per cent in 1980, to about 5% today.  Again the Government succeeded in bringing down the budget deficit which had in 1976 amounted to some 10% of Gross National Product.  It is now about 2% of GNP and so it is not really out of line with what a lot of other countries are doing by running tightish fiscal policies.

But the central problem which has appeared with this medium-term financial strategy is that the Thatcher government introduced tighter monetary and fiscal policies against a background of a rigid labour market and a sclerotic economy, and such monetary/fiscal policies plus the sclerosis induced by government regulation adds up to one thing.  It's called unemployment.  The British unemployment rate is running at just over 13 per cent of the labour force.

Thus the problem has been that monetary control and fiscally tight policies have brought down the inflation rate at a severe cost in high recorded unemployment.  So one first lesson to be learnt is that if you seek to control inflation by "monetarist" means, and to behave as Milton Friedman might tell you to, it is vitally necessary to deregulate the labour market at the same time, if not before, to avoid the economic side-effects which are likely to come about.  That, indeed, is lesson number one of the Thatcher experience, and one of immense relevance to Australia, with its byzantine system of labour market regulations revolving round the conciliation and arbitration system.

The second thing the Thatcher team tried to do in the first term of office was to cut government spending in order to be able to cut taxation while bringing down the budget deficit.  In 1980 they had a plan for a minor pruning of government spending amounting to about four percentage points of its volume over a four-year period.  What actually happened over that four-year period is that government spending grew by 8 percentage points in volume.  Spending increased so much that Britons had to suffer the largest tax rise in their peace-time history in order for the budget deficit targets to be roughly achieved. ⁽²⁾

So the second lesson is that it is easy to talk about cutting government spending but it's damnably difficult to do.  That is especially the case if the economy is sclerotic, because with mounting unemployment there will be mounting welfare payments and expenditure on "retraining" and "job creation" schemes.  That factor has accounted for a considerable part of the growth in government spending in Britain over recent years.  With a lot of people on the dole or in make-work schemes, government spending has been forced up.  So again the lesson to be learned from this experience is that in order to tackle the government spending problem you have got to deregulate the economy, especially the labour market, so that re-absorption of the unemployed does not generate further growth of government spending.

The one great success on the deregulation front between 1979 and 1983, which was crucial (along with the Falklands war) in the winning of the 1983 election by Mrs Thatcher, was the sale of municipal council housing, which by now has involved over half a million homes.  This proved to be a privatisation measure which was immensely popular.  People wanted to own their own homes and, at a political level, it was probably crucial in turning many people away from voting Labour towards voting Conservative.  This raises the point, which I shall come back to, that privatisation can be made into highly popular, and thus highly practical, politics,

1983 AND ALL THAT

But undoubtedly the Falklands war was the most important factor of all in Mrs Thatcher's massive electoral victory in 1983.  A war tends to create a psychological climate of national camaraderie and solidarity.  If you win it as well, that helps considerably.  And it was a staggering win -- the figures show that this was the most outstanding British battle success since the battle of Agincourt against the French in the 15th century.  Mrs Thatcher had militarily demonstrated the metal of which she was made.  At the 1983 election, she was confirmed in power on a tide of national approbation of her iron steadfastness, with a majority in Parliament of some 143 seats, the largest majority since 1945.

What has happened since 1983?  Has the Thatcher "revolution" gone on?  Partly yes and partly no.  The government had always said in reply to free market critics, "Well, you are absolutely right, we should have deregulated at a rapid pace during our first term, but we had to tackle inflation first.  We are going to leave the deregulation side to our second term in office;  that is when we are really going to tackle the deregulation issue.  And that is also when we are really going to cut taxes and cut government spending.  We had to tackle the inflation problem first and deal with that before getting to the other issues."

A new Chancellor, Mr Nigel Lawson, was installed, and he was on paper strongly in favour of cutting government spending and taxation.  Unfortunately that hasn't happened, and government spending has continued to mount.  Now, the government talks instead about a so-called "consolidation strategy".  This really means the idea of pruning government has been abandoned in favour of allowing spending levels to be maintained in real terms.

The Government implicitly admits that it cannot cut government spending due to the immense pressures from all the organised lobbies and fiscal interest groups which are always pressing for extra largesse.  But it hopes, if it is lucky, to hold the line against further growth as a percentage of GDP.  (By 1984 government spending had reached about 53 per cent of GDP at factor cost.)  So there has been some back-tracking on cutting government spending and therefore cutting taxation.  That is a central failure of Mrs Thatcher's second term, from a classical liberal point of view.

A second thing that Chancellor Lawson sought to do was to make the tax system more neutral.  By reducing the number of loopholes, it was hoped to make people's investment and other choices of economic action depend more on their merits and less on their tax consequences, with consequent gains in economic efficiency.  Mr Lawson tried to do that gradually, by removing one loophole after another, and he ran in slow motion into the same sort of problems that seem to have caused the downfall of the recent Australian Tax Summit.  That is, if you block any particular loophole, some interest group screams.  As he was blocking them one at a time it maximised the political flak to which he was exposed, because every particular group affected by the threatened removal of the tax relief or loophole (for example, the pension funds) was able to get up and bellyache about it without any counter-clamour.  Here again political resistance to change eventually caused a government climbdown on major reform.  Tax reform leading to eventual tax neutrality between activities now seems to be off the agenda in Mrs Thatcher's Britain.  This has been another major failure to introduce what is from a classical liberal perspective a necessary reform.

PRIVATISATION

There have been two major success areas, I think, since 1983.  Firstly, on privatisation.  In its first term of office the Thatcher government managed to sell off less than £1.8 billion of "public" assets to the private sector.  Small beer really.  General government spending in Britain is running at about £146 billion per annum so £1.8 billion is only a drop in the ocean.  Since 1983, however, the Thatcher government has managed to sell off about £6 billion worth of "public" sector assets, including a large chunk of British Telecom -- which was the biggest share flotation in history.  The programme has been a success in a number of ways.

First, it became very popular among the general public to buy these shares.  Share ownership is now extending in Great Britain from a small "elite" of private clients, and from the pension funds, to a much wider section of the population.

Second, in the privatised concerns we are seeing the efficiency advantages of private ownership coming through.  All the concerns which have been privatised have done well and have often turned their situations round from loss to profit.

The Thatcher government has a further very extensive -- if not massive -- programme of privatisation in hand up until 1988, including British Airways, the National Bus Company, Rolls-Royce, the Royal Ordnance Factories, the British Airports Authority, and -- most important of all -- the complete transfer to the private sector, by sale of shares, of British Gas.  This last sale, it is estimated, will yield in 1986-87, between £6 billion and £10 billion.

Privatisation has proved to be politically very popular.  Nationalisation and state ownership have always been politically unpopular in Britain, with opinion polls recording about 75% of people against.  On the grounds of extending share ownership, achieving greater efficiency, and maintaining political popularity, the Thatcher government has scored a major success with its privatisation programme.  Here, surely, is another lesson for the future of Australia.

THE TRADE UNION PROBLEM

The other major area in which Mrs Thatcher and her ministers have been successful is in challenging and outfacing union power. ⁽³⁾  In their first term of office they passed two Acts of Parliament which slightly qualified the legal immunities enjoyed by British trade unions -- but only slightly.  The unions tried unsuccessfully, to frustrate the operation of the Acts. ⁽⁴⁾

The real union challenge to Mrs Thatcher's rule, however -- and it was a direct and open challenge -- came in February 1984 when the president of the National Union of Mineworkers, Mr Arthur Scargill, (an admitted Marxist who is Moscow-trained and has spent long periods of time in the Soviet Union), tried to call out on strike the mineworkers, who are a key group in the energy sector in the British economy.

Some curious things happened.

• First, the miners were split.  Why?  Because Mrs Thatcher had very cunningly offered -- via the National Coal Board -- that no one need lose his job if the mining industry was cut back.  They would employ anyone who wanted to stay on, in another job in another place, but they were going to close down inefficient mines,
• Second, very generous redundancy payments were offered to anyone who would voluntarily leave the mining industry.  And it was these terms which split the miners.  Some wanted to stay and others wanted to go.  The split was fairly predictable.  The profitable pits wanted to accept the offer and the highly unprofitable pits wanted to reject it.  Here, you must remember that we have got an average cost of producing coal at the pit-head in the UK of about £35 per tonne for deep-mined coal, compared with a cost of about £17 per tonne for comparable comparable deep-mined coal in Australia.  Even including shipping costs, Australian coal is between £5 and £10 cheaper per tonne.  We have had a burden of extremely unprofitable pits in the British coal mining industry as a result of extensive subsidisation over many years.

The National Union of Mineworkers historically has achieved the reputation of being the most powerful union in the British labour movement for a number of reasons.  The miners started the General Strike of 1926.  In 1972, they developed and utilised mass secondary picketing -- this was not your ordinary picket where the striking workers picket their workplace, it was miners picketing power stations and other places where coal was used or transported -- and the police could not stop it.  In 1974 they had another mass strike -- again involving violent, mass secondary picketing -- which actually led to a general election explicitly on the issue of 'who runs the country, the government or the unions?  People voted that the unions seemed to run the country -- and so the Labour Party got into power once again.

What happened in the recent confrontation was quite different.  Mrs Thatcher won the campaign against the striking miners and the thugs.  How?  Well, firstly she had suffered a bit of a defeat in 1981 when Arthur Scargill had demanded a trebling of operating subsidies to the coal mines.  That time, Mr Scargill had her over a barrel, and she gave in.  But what the Government then started to do was to build up very large stocks of coal at the pit-heads and at the power stations for the next time round -- which everyone knew was coming.  They knew there was going to be another "coal war".  Arthur Scargill had been given his danegeld in 1981 and would be back for more.

The strike duly began in February 1984.  It had been preceded by a six months overtime ban, and Mr Scargill confidently predicted that the lights of Britain would go out within six weeks and that the elected government would be brought down.  Mr Scargill is an expert student of American union tactics of flying squadrons, flying pickets, and that sort of thing, and his goon squads are skilled in the use of clubs, nail guns, Molotov cocktails and the like.  He has a private army of four to five thousand thugs which he deployed against anyone who opposed him during the strike.  On past experience one would have thought that the government would cave in or the lights would go out, or both -- and Mr Scargill would win.

After one year and one month, however, the lights had still not gone out.  This was, firstly, because certain coal miners kept on working (about 30 per cent of them) and others went back to work as time went on;  secondly, because the police were mobilised nationally in order to put down the rampaging mobs who were attacking working miners;  and thirdly, because of the large stocks of coal at the power stations which had been built up for just this situation. ⁽⁵⁾  Also, there was more importation of coal, often through small ports in a clandestine fashion, in order to keep the coal stocks high.  Eventually Scargill had to concede defeat and the striking miners returned to work.  That was a major victory for the government, and a shattering blow to confidence in the notion that unions, or at least the miners, can bring down an elected Government in Britain (as it had commonly been assumed that they could).  Whether this is a lesson directly applicable to Australia is a moot point.  Certainly the union problem is deeply embedded in Australia and in some respects (particularly through its interconnection with the wage-fixing system) may even be more serious here than in the UK.

Overall, however, we come back to the problem that the British Government has got to deregulate but it has not deregulated fast enough.  It is now starting to talk about deregulation, of shopping hours and wage-fixing councils for example, but it is only two years till the next election is due in Britain, which is a little bit late to start doing deregulation comprehensively.  Labour market deregulation remains the kernel of the problem both in Britain and Australia.

"ENTERPRISE CULTURE" OR "DOLE CULTURE"?

Another problem concerns the enterprise ethic versus the welfare state ethic.  The message has been hammered home well to the British people that we must return to being an enterprise culture.  That has been the consistent message of Mrs Thatcher and her Chancellor, Mr Nigel Lawson, that we will either sink or swim in this world of international competition.  Their theme has been that we will "swim" only if we can generate goods and services that other countries want, and do it at competitive prices.  And if we can't do that then no one in the world owes us a living, and we are likely to become the first industrialised peasants of the Western world.  They have managed to get that message across, and the response it caused amongst the British people is in one way striking.  Births of new enterprises are now increasing quite rapidly.

In the last four years the United Kingdom has had the highest rates of new enterprise formation that we have ever seen historically;  and this "birth rate" has mounted year by year.  At the same time, however, it has been restrained by what you might call the "welfare culture" or "dole culture" into which many British people have now sunk.  At the bottom of the income scale, many people in Britain face 100 per cent marginal rates of "taxation", and if they can be on the dole and get as much, or almost as much, money as they can get in work, many people choose to be out of work (and sometimes to work in the black economy as well, on the side, so that they are even better off).  This "welfare culture" makes the reintroduction of an enterprise culture that much more difficult.  To change social attitudes is not something you can do overnight.  It may be possible to change the attitudes of some people quite quickly -- say the "leading" five per cent -- and they might turn out to be the entrepreneurial leaders of the future.  But to turn around a whole society in a couple of years, when once a substantial minority has absorbed and accepted the ideas of the dole culture, is evidently a much more difficult thing indeed.  Britain still has a long-run problem in this regard, I would surmise that contemporary Australia has exactly the same difficulty of a deeply embedded dole culture.

TALKING TOUGH AND ACTING SOFT

The British Conservatives also have political problems in that a lot of people are getting "fed up" with Mrs Thatcher's personal style.  She does indeed tend to be rather intimidating, and that goes for whoever she is dealing with:  presidents, prime ministers, or whoever.  It sometimes seems she is endlessly lecturing the entire population.  In fairness you must admit she is presenting a message which has to be presented.  There is no such thing as a free lunch;  and the British do indeed have to return to an enterprise culture.

The point is that having been in office as a powerful prime minister for so long there is now perhaps increasing resentment of Mrs Thatcher, or at least her abrasive style.  The Government is also in the middle of its term of office and there is a sort of mid-term blues effect in operation.  The Conservatives recently slipped to third place in the ratings, although public concern about inner-city riots have since restored them to first place.  Perhaps the harsh lesson to be absorbed by some future Australian Prime Minister (Mr Howard, perhaps?), who is seeking to reverse economic decline by allowing markets to work, is that he may not be much thanked for such efforts.  Change is resisted by vested interests, or by a bemused and conservative electorate.

This, however, brings us back to the vital role of winning the battle for ideas, on a broad, public front, as the necessary precondition for public acceptance of new, market-oriented policies.  No Prime Minister, Australian or British, however courageous, is likely to embrace wholeheartedly such an economic strategy unless he or she can feel confident of (at least a sufficient measure of) public support.  Here, I am sure that the role of independent think-tanks, will prove to be crucial in changing ideas ~- as was and remains the case with the Institute of Economic Affairs in London.

Another lesson for a future, market-oriented Australian Prime Minister in this regard is that it is really rather pointless, if not entirely counterproductive, to talk hard about deregulation but to act soft.  This is the mistake that Mrs Thatcher has made.  Her platform rhetoric and advocacy regarding the case for the market economy, the abuse of union power, the need to regenerate an enterprise culture, and so forth, has usually been admirable.  But her government's actions -- with the recent exceptions of the speed of privatisation and the defeat of Mr Scargill -- have often been at best inadequate and at worst pitiful.

There is little point in talking hard and acting soft.  Mrs Thatcher's hard talk has allowed her to be portrayed as "uncaring" -- in some depictions, a virtual "Beast 666" -- by her political opponents, while the timorous acts of deregulation have failed to usher in an new era of sweeping market-generated change.

In this connection the lesson to be learned in Australia is that if a policy of deregulation is to be adopted, then the Government doing it should work on the principle that it may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.

CONCLUSION

The general, overall conclusion is simply this.  Once a country has caught the British disease it is very, very difficult to reverse or cure it by a softly softly bit-by-bit approach.  It is far better to deregulate the economy comprehensively and broadly and quickly (as Ludwig Erhardt did in West Germany in 1950);  and if possible, in your first term of office.  Otherwise you just drag out the economic and political problems and make the agony last longer.  If the Thatcher Government had deregulated sharply and swiftly in its first term of office, and if it had faced the unions in its first term of office, it wouldn't have the problems it has now.  In particular, the British economy would be in better shape on the employment front.

So when Australia comes to have to tackle its own case of the British disease by market deregulation -- as eventually it will have to -- the way is to do it without delay;  to do it quickly, and to do it comprehensively.  Such a package approach to deregulation is a far better way of doing things than the bit-by-bit approach that Mrs Thatcher has mainly adopted.  The reason is that the package approach puts all groups, all vested interests, in the same boat.  It puts the farmers, the miners, the manufacturers, the high-tech lobby, the welfare lobby, everyone, in the same position.  They will find they have all got to adjust.  They will realise that everyone else has to adjust too and that it is not just them being picked on by the government.  This sort of strategy will make it much easier to "sell" a free market approach to the economy and to introduce the necessary measures of deregulation.

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ENDNOTES

1.  Initially, central emphasis was laid by the Bank of England and the Treasury on containing the growth of Sterling M3 (a broad measure of the UK money supply).  This emphasis was abandoned in mid-October 1985, due to the erratic behaviour of M3, in favour of a more flexible array of measures of money-market tightness.

2.  For further and detailed discussion see J. Burton, Why no cuts?, Hobart Paper 104, London, Institute of Economic Affairs, 1985

3.  The nature of the union problem in relation to the British disease is examined in J. Burton, "The British disease and trade unionism" in J.T. Addison & J. Burton, Trade unions and society:  some lessons of the British experience, Vancouver, Fraser Institute, 1984, pp 1-24.

4.  In contrast to the confrontation between the unions and the Heath (Conservative) government of 1970-74 over the 1971 Industrial Relations Act.  The Act was stymied by intransigent union opposition and eventually repealed at union insistence in 1974.

5.  Another important factor was the ability of the Central Electricity Generating Board to reduce its coal consumption by stepping up its use of oil and nuclear power stations.  The CEGB had been secretly planning such tactics well before the Scargill strike occurred.

Land Rights and Legitimacy

Foreword

The three short papers which make up this volume are not new:  The arguments have already appeared in somewhat different form in Quadrant;  published by the Interchurch Committee on Aboriginal Affairs;  and as one of my columns in the Australian Financial Review.

My purpose in publishing these papers together is to help forward the current Australian debate on land rights for Aborigines.  That debate has so far generated rather more heat than light.  It has usually taken the form of categorical public pronouncements by public figures unwilling or unable to lay bare the assumptions behind their stated positions.

The first paper's central theme, visibly within the tradition of Edmund Burke, is the legitimacy of British civilisation in Australia.  That legitimacy is essential to the institutions which make for social cohesion.  The establishment of legitimacy also has the effect of ruling out the conquerors' guilt as a basis for the making of policy.  Equally important, part of the cohesive civil order is the uniformity of rights and privileges.  This paper would therefore not consider Aboriginal land claims as a "right".  This paper would not, however, exclude grants or gifts of land as a means of remedying particular disadvantage provided the title to the land be alienable.

The third paper is essentially pragmatic, in that this paper assumes to a certain extent that the time for arguments ab initio is past.  This paper's preferred solution to the problem relies on two well-established liberal principles:  a needs-based welfare which encompasses a wide definition of particular needs;  and the inviolability of property rights.

The second paper's arguments are less self-contained.  This paper starts from a broad notion of justice, which shades off into a less readily definable concept of "social justice" with an admixture of Christian charity.  This paper's central point -- the satisfaction of the legitimate aspirations of the citizen -- leads him first to assert that land rights arise out of the necessities of justice, and then to identify different forms of justice relating to different classes of dispossession.  This paper is not explicit on one crucial point:  whether or not title to land should be alienable.  This paper refers, indeed, to "inalienable freehold" yet by reference elsewhere to the uniform operation of the rule of law and liberties this paper appears not to rule out alienable title.  Some details of this paper as they relate to the Seaman enquiry have now been overtaken by events in W.A.;  but that does not invalidate its argument from general principles.

I hope that this volume will encourage discussion in a tortuous area of policy-making.

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The legitimacy of British civilisation in Australia

I want to talk to you briefly about the general topic of British legitimacy in Australia, partly becasue it is something which obviously concerns you, and also because it is something, believe it or not, which concerns us.  Britain is, as you know, very much a beleaguered nation, torn by industrial and social strife.  We have seen our communities uprooted and dispersed by immigration which we have not been able to absorb.  We have also lost a great proportion of our population, much of it to Australia.  And we too are looking to our past and to our present vision of our past for some sense of legitimacy, which will carry us through the days ahead.

It seems to me that the problem of British legitimacy in Australia is no different in the end from the problem of British legitimacy in Britain.  And, in so far as we are convinced that our occupation of Britain is legitimate, we ought to be convinced that your occupation of Australia is legitimate too.

There is a vociferous section of the community here that is concerned to induce feelings of guilt about what has been done in the past concerning the settlement here.  It is said to you in a variety of tones of voice, through virtually every channel of communication, that somehow you should not have been here in the first place and if you are here it is only by some accident of fortune for which you should pay due compensation to somebody else.  I think it is characteristic of Australians, from my brief experience of them, to accept all criticism with a smile and a nod and the remark, "You are right you know.  What can I do?".  And this lack of self confidence increases the more people attack you.  You have not yet reached the point of hitting back.  However, it seems to me that in the end one has to hit back, and the more one feels the attack coming from within one's own community, the more necessary it is to hit back directly.

You are here legitimately, and there is no argument that can show otherwise.  Any argument that suggests that people who come by conquest to a land are there illegitimately does not apply to you.  But even if it did apply to you, it would apply to us and to just about every other nation in the world.  The Anglo-Saxon occupation of the British islands is illegitimate by this criterion.  Nevertheless, we are there and what else can we do but be there and behave properly while we are there?  The same goes for you;  you are here and there is no alternative for you but to be here now.  We have closed our ports to you, even in England.  You have Australian nationality;  you have no choice but to be on this continent.  So, however you came here (and it was not by conquest), you are here legitimately.

Because of the way in which myths arise in every society, there is a problem as to how your sovereignty arises.  It seems to me that the only myths that matter are the ones that we can now believe.  The past is shrouded in mystery.  We can remake it in a variety of ways;  we can re-make it according to the needs of the moment.  The important thing is how we see ourselves now.  Do we see ourselves as bound together in a sovereign body or do we think of ourselves as simply a scattered community?  My view is that Australians, just as much as the British, are bound together by common allegiances and by a proper sense of their sovereignty.  Proving this is rather difficult, but I shall give you some examples.

You, like us, have the benefit of a political process.  That is to say, every now and then you declare whether you approve of the incumbent government, and if so, you vote it into office.  If you do not approve of it you vote it out of office.  The choice is, of course limited;  nevertheless, a choice is there.  By this process, some of the great issues that confront you can be subjected to popular choice.  And I think that you all regard this as an important part of what it is to be Australian.  This political process cannot fail to be part of your sense of legitimacy.

The political process does not consist merely in the change in Parliament every few years.  It also consists in the exercise of law and in the fact that any Australian citizen can claim his rights as defined in law.  The processes of parliamentary election and adjudication do not exist everywhere, and where they do not exist people have a diminished sense of legitimacy.  Consider the Soviet Union:  there has not been a genuine election there, ever.  The Soviet Union was founded on an act of violence which promptly set about demolishing every possibility of a truly elected office.  Nor has there really been a rule of law in the Soviet Union since its beginning.  Nobody could now stand before a court of law in the Soviet Union and challenge the powers that be, without risking punishment.  As a result, as I think most of us now know, there is a great deficiency of legitimacy in the Soviet Union.  The ordinary Soviet citizen does not really feel that the powers that be have legitimate sovereignty over him.  He knows that they can coerce him, he knows that they threaten him;  but whether they are legitimate powers is a question which he cannot ask himself.

It is still the case that the question of origins must be somewhat perplexing for you, as it is perplexing for any new nation.  So, it is important to understand why one should defend the origins of the British settlement in Australia, and all the subsequent settlements which have come in the wake of the rule of law that was then established.  Obviously, there are settlements and settlements, but an important thing about the Australian case is that it was a genuine settlement.  People came here with the desire, not to conquer but to settle, with specific instructions from the sovereign body in England to be kind to the natives and to offer them whatever exchanges could be offered for whatever land was taken.  Of course, these instructions were often disobeyed, as all such instructions are disobeyed.  But it is still the case that the people who first settled here did not come in a spirit of conquest.  This has to be contrasted, for example with the Chinese occupation of Tibet, which is one of the more recent occupations of modern history.  Not only was an existing sovereignty extinguished forever;  half the population was also murdered and the religion of the place abolished.  The settlers in Australia had no such intent;  there was an official policy of peaceful co-existence;  moreover, it was thought at the time that the land of Australia was one over which no existing sovereignty was exerted.  There was not an existing power exerting those rights that we would normally know by the name of sovereignty;  there were simply tribal groupings living peacefully without claiming sovereignty over the land.  This may or may not be mistaken.  No-one has ever really settled this issue because, of course, the customs of the Aboriginal do not allow application of the relevant legal concepts.

In any case, this was, by human standards, a fairly peaceful occupation, and one which was carried out with the best intentions.  But it was carried out by imperfect and afflicted people, who had perhaps a slightly greater portion of original sin than the mass of mankind.

Those settlers existed in the past and nothing relevant can be proven by blaming them or praising them.  One thing, however, should be said in favour of their immediate descendants.  They immediately set about building institutions of law and politics in a continent which had not previously known these things.  Now, this takes me back to the point that I began with:  you have and enjoy political institutions, a political process, a rule of law, and important religious, cultural and educational establishments which create a sense of a common civilization and a common world.  These you regard as benefits and they cause you to cohere in ways which I think the original population of Australia did not cohere.  They must, by any human standards, be regarded as achievements, and the fact that they were brought into Australia almost immediately after the settlement of Australia is one of the bases for your claim to legitimacy.  It is not everywhere that political institutions, the rule of law, and autonomous educational bodies still exist.  Only in very few places do they exist, but they do exist here and the claim to legitimacy must lie partly in this fact.

So, by and large, considering the issue in its most general conception, it seems to me that there is not any doubt that the British presence in Australia was originally legitimate, and that the civilisation that has flowed from that presence is equally legitimate -- as legitimate as anything else in the modern world.  Any argument saying that it is not legitimate should also conclude that just about everything else in the modern world is illegitimate too.

But, of course, there were conflicts, and these conflicts remain.  The life style of the Aborigines was destroyed.  It seems to me an inevitable consequence of any settlement that the way of life of the previous inhabitants must at some stage be put in question.  They must either fight for it or succumb;  they must either adopt the civilisation which has come to their shores or resist it.  It is one of the tragedies of the Aborigines in Australia that they could not adopt the civilisation that came to their shores in the way in which it was presented to them.  Nor did they have the armaments or the organisation with which to resist it.

That is an important point.  Modern Australians have a lesson to learn from the Aborigines;  trouble can come from anywhere at any time, and it is important for any civilisation that wishes to survive to have the means to confront that trouble.  For example, massive trouble from the Soviet Union could arrive here at any moment and your defences are as weak in opposition to that threat as were the defences of the Aborigines in opposition to British settlement.

Going back to the Aborigines, it is clear that they could neither adopt nor resist the civilisation that was imposed on them.  This is what has created some of the guilt which now afflicts you.  But not all of this guilt is natural.  Much of it has been artificially aroused by intellectuals, by people whom Australians have yet to learn to despise as they ought to be despised.  Guilt is being imposed upon you through the media, the universities and, in particular, through the concentration of power that exists in the three great cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.  You have now to face up to the question of what you are going to do about this revived claim that the Aborigines have against your conscience.  My view is, as far as I understand it, that you should carry on as you were.  You should ignore what is being said to you.

Of course, the Aborigines had possession of the land or of great tracts of it before your ancestors came.  But the Aborigines who had possession of that land are no longer alive.  There is no way in which that land can be restored to them.  It can be restored only to people who claim to be their descendants;  but nobody really knows who those people are.  And even if they do know who they are, the claim to land relies on the application of very dubious criteria which should have no place in the system of law which you have inherited.

The only criterion for saying that a given Aboriginal is now entitled to the land of his ancestors, is a racial criterion.  If you build this kind of right into your law, you are enacting what could be called positive racism.  That is to say, you are saying that somebody's race is sufficient reason for a privilege granted in law.  And you know what will be the negative consequence of that.  People will begin thinking that Australian citizens are classified and rewarded according to their race and not according to their talents, their application, loyalty or any other more coherent legal idea.  So there is a great danger in trying to recompense the present Aboriginal population for injustices done to its predecessors.  My own view is that the correct approach to the Aboriginal claim to land rights is to recognise, first of all, that the Aboriginal is either a citizen of Australia or nothing.  If he is a citizen of Australia he owes allegiance to the State of Australia as much as you do, and therefore his rights and privileges must be determined according to the same principles as yours are determined.

If it is felt that his being an Aboriginal has in some way disadvantaged him, then it is possible to grant him recompense, perhaps with a gift of money, even with a gift of land.  But a gift that recompenses an individual must be a genuine gift.  In particular it must be alienable.  It must be possible for him, having been given this privilege in recompense for whatever misfortune he has suffered, to use it to establish his position in life.  Hence, he must be allowed to sell it.  So that, whatever one thinks about the position of the Aborigines, whatever privilege in land or otherwise one wants to offer them to compensate for what they have suffered, the resulting gift must not be inalienable.

Out of guilt you are actually attempting to make what is not a gift to the Aboriginals but a new kind of right in land, an inalienable right which will isolate them from you forever.  I think that is dangerous both for you and for them.

Obviously, the society of Australia has changed a lot since the first settlers.  Many people have come here from quite different backgrounds and you naturally face the question as to who should be able to come here, bringing what culture, bringing what techniques and what skills and with what purpose.  And there must be an answer given to these questions too.  All I can say by way of a brief suggestion is this.  Whoever comes here must be capable of adopting the traditions, the customs and the citizenship that have been established in Australia over the last 200 years.  It is difficult to define those traditions and customs and citizenship.  But first and foremost and among the ingredients that constitute Australian citizenship is the obedience to the rule of law and recognition of the common law of England, which formed all the institutions of this society.  Some people are capable of such obedience, others are not.  Your principal criterion for accepting new immigrants must therefore be the capacity to accept the authority and meaning of the English common law.

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Aboriginal land rights in WA:  a property rights approach

SOME FACTS ABOUT ABORIGINES AND LAND

Prior to the arrival of the First British Fleet at Sydney Cove in 1788, Australian Aboriginal tribes had inhabited Australia for up to 50,000 years.  Each tribe had its own law, described by Justice Blackburn in Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd in these terms:

a subtle and elaborate system highly adapted to the country in which people led their lives, which provided a stable order of society and was remarkably free from the vagaries of personal whim or influence ... "a government of laws, and not of men".

With British settlement came the British system of law, which did not recognise the Aboriginal system of law.  In British law, a legal fiction operated to transform Australia into a vacant land for legal purposes.  It was as if the Aborigines did not exist, as if they had no system of law, and as if they had no claim to any land.  This legal fiction allowed for untrammelled settlement, mining, agricultural and pastoral development throughout the country.  Aboriginal tribes remained, gathered or were forcibly settled in the remote and unwanted Central Desert, Kimberley, Arnhem Land and Cape York areas or else on smaller reserves on the outskirts of country towns and on cattle stations.

By 1930, the Aboriginal population, which had been up to 300,000 before British settlement, had declined to 70,000.  In the 1981 Census, 145,000 persons identified themselves as Aboriginal and 15,000 as Torres Strait Islander.  So now 1.1% of our population identifies itself as being descended from the original inhabitants of the land.  Of those, about 40,000 are estimated to be of full Aboriginal descent.  Over 93,000 live in or about urban areas.

Despite 196 years of unchecked economic development and government policies directed first at "smoothing the dying pillow" and then at assimilating Aborigines to make them like their vanquishers, there are still Aboriginal communities living on their lands, discharging their spiritual and communal responsibilities.  Only in the last 15 years has government policy changed to allow Aborigines legal control and ownership of their lands, self-management of their communities and self-determination of their futures.  Yet many Australians who are not Aboriginal continue to say, "Why can't they be like the rest of us?"

SOME PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE

As the citizens of a democracy living under the rule of law and hopefully not merely under the whim of politicians (even if they do happen to be elected) we expect that the legitimate aspirations of all citizens will adequately be protected by law, with provision for compensation if those aspirations are thwarted.  This is not to say that all legitimate aspirations are so protected.  But the more they are, then the better will our social order be;  and the more equitably they are protected, the more just will that order be.  In a multi-cultural society, it would be tyranny for the dominant culture to dictate in its own terms what aspirations were worthy of protection.

Presumably, the issue of land rights for Aborigines is one of justice rather than charity.  It is the just claim of Aborigines to land which must be identified and achieved.  Those claims may be made on very different bases:  for instance legal recognition, restitution, compensation, or need.

Where a traditional tribal community has continued to reside on its traditional land, discharging its spiritual obligations with regard to that land, and that land has never been occupied by any other persons, that community is entitled to a legal title to that land in legal recognition of the fact that they have always lived on that land, land to which no other persons have any moral claim.  To deny legal title to that land would be to complete the act of dispossession commenced almost 200 years ago or else it would be to deny the rule of law operation with respect to these citizens and their most precious possession.

Where a traditional tribal community has been moved from its traditional land and it is land to which no other persons have a moral claim, that community should be granted title to that land in restitution.

Where an Aboriginal community consists of people who have been moved from their traditional lands to make way for pastoral or other development, and there is now no question of restoring to them their traditional land because other persons have subsequently got their own moral claims to the land by virtue of occupancy, labour and expenditure, that community is entitled to compensation.  If that community has remained an identifiable group on identifiable land to which no other persons have title, the community is entitled to title as compensation for what they lost as members of that community.

Of the 93,000 Aborigines living in or about urban areas, most are no longer in communities living on large areas of identifiable Aboriginal land.  They no longer live together as tribal communities.  Yet they are the ones who have suffered most through dispossession.  They are urban dwellers or fringe-dwellers whose forebears are from various tribal groups and often from other races.  They still see themselves as Aboriginal because they are.  Generally for them, land rights cannot be a matter of restitution of tribal land.  And for the urban dweller, it cannot take the form of a communal land grant in compensation.  Rather what is sought is assistance with their great needs in making the transition to an urban existence and all that goes with it, in a society which is less than welcoming to those for whom dispossession has often meant not only loss of culture but also loss of family.  After all, it is their dispossession on which we have constructed the monolith which is Australian society and its prosperity.  Note that this is not to argue that we must pay reparation for the sins of our forefathers perpetrated on others' forefathers.  It is to say that we have a duty to share the fruits of those sins with those who suffered by them and who continue to suffer.

Of course, these principles of justice would have to be qualified if land, the resource in question, were scarce.  But at this time, we are considering a situation of abundance.  The application of the principles would not result in any citizen losing their house, beach house, farm or even their vacant block.  Aboriginal rights and claims to land would be satisfied out of the large left-overs, the unalienated crown lands.

Society has a responsibility not only to recognise the land rights of remote Aboriginal communities but also to fulfil the land need of urban and fringe-dwelling Aborigines.  The plight of the poor dispossessed white man does not excuse us from considering that of the Aboriginal.  It is suggestive only of the need for more widespread social change than what is being contemplated under the banner of Aboriginal land rights.

There are liberties and services to which all citizens are entitled regardless of their ability to pay or contribute to the provision of same.  These liberties must be granted and services provided in ways suited to the local community.

In a state where there are tiers of government, functions of local government should be given to communities which identify themselves as local communities and are capable of discharging those functions.

Special legislative measures for individuals or communities which distinguish on the basis of race should be made only with the advice and consent of the people affected and so as not to affect adversely the fundamental liberties of any person without their consent.

Members of minority groups should determine and manage for themselves, as far as possible, programmes for their "advancement" in society.  This is not primarily a task for government even though government provides the funds.

EXISTING ABORIGINAL RESERVES

The Western Australian Government has already decided that "land rights:  will be extended to all land reserved for the use and benefit of Aboriginals" in this State.  Such reserved lands together with Aboriginal lease lands comprise about 22 million hectares (8.66 per cent of the State).  These reserved lands (19 million hectares), as I understand it, have never been inhabited by any persons other than the local Aboriginal communities.

Over 14 million hectares of this land is situated in Central Australia from about Warburton to Balgo.  Other major areas are in the northern Kimberleys and the central north west.  As in all other states of Australia, these areas are found generally at the extremities of pastoral development -- areas which were unwanted leftovers or areas where Aborigines could be left to themselves without the disruption of pastoral expansion.  These lands are usually inhabited by traditional tribal communities on their traditional lands or by communities which were herded together for their own protection or because they were troublemakers or half-castes.  In all cases these lands have always been Aboriginal land.  To give title to these lands will not cost anybody anything.  It will simply be the matching of legal reality with historical fact.  Ownership and control of these lands will be vested in the communities who have always lived on them.  So the issue is not the handing over of new lands, but the vesting of local control and ownership, thereby creating security of citizens who deserve to have their moral claim and title to the land recognised in law.

And where is the controversy in that?  Even the WA Liberal Party which has said "We will not grant land rights to Aborigines on racial grounds", has undertaken to maintain its policy of "granting Aboriginal people use of reserves".  If continued use, why not ownership?  It must be admitted that there are no other persons with claims to these reserve areas.  The moral claim of the local people is unassailable.  To recognise that claim in law would cost us nothing.

PASTORAL EXCISIONS

There are a significant number of Aborigines who still live on the larger pastoral properties in this State.  Often the men work as stockmen.  In law these people are like gypsies with no legal title to the land on which they live.  Mr Seaman ⁽¹⁾ has recommended that they be eligible for some land to be excised from a pastoral lease for their living purposes.  The area would be a "reasonable living area" which would preserve the privacy of the existing dwellings of other people on the pastoral lease, and which would not "unreasonably interfere with the pastoral operations".  So there is to be an accommodation of everybody's interests in the making of such grants with the result that not even the pastoralist would lose out, but the Aborigines would gain some legal security over the land on which they presently live.  One material advantage of this would be the availability of funds from the Aboriginal Development Commission for the construction of improvements on land in which Aborigines have an interest.

UNALIENATED CROWN LAND OCCUPIED BY ABORIGINES

Though no figures are available, Mr Seaman has expressed the view that vacant crown lands which are not used or set aside for any other purpose should be available for claim by Aboriginal groups when there are "existing traditional relationships between living claimants and that land, and/or the long association by residence on or use of that land by living claimants".  Once again, this recommendation must be seen not as one that places aboriginal claims above existing claims of other citizens, but as one that attempts to recognise Aboriginal claims when and only when there are no countervailing claims.  So the present cost to the rest of society would be absolutely nothing, though in the future it may mean a reduction in the amount of crown land available for other purposes.  But remember, these lands are vacant after 200 years of untrammelled economic expansion.  Thus, the future cost, if any, should be seen as tolerable and acceptable.

All categories mentioned so far deal with existing Aboriginal relationships to land.  The recommendations are aimed at the legal protection and recognition of those relationships without derogation from the rights of other citizens in relation to land.

Mr Seaman has also been commissioned to investigate how the law might satisfy "the reasonable aspirations of Aboriginal people to rights in relation to lands".  Here the concern is not with Aboriginal communities on reserves or on pastoral properties, but with displaced and dispossessed Aborigines who live on the fringes or in our towns and cities.  Mr Seaman has recommended that they be able to make claim to unalienated crown lands on the basis of need, once again avoiding any conflict of claims between Aborigines and others but simply seeking to fulfil the needs of Aborigines from the surplus which is utilised by nobody.  After all, no grant would be made if an objector could establish "detriment to some existing interest in or in relation to the land, interference with reasonable access to other areas, or detriment to rights or interests in other land in the area".

Mr Seaman has specifically recommended that all claims to land ought to be met "from Crown Land or by the purchase of land in the open market".  So, even these claims would be restricted to unwanted crown land or private land for sale on the open market.  No one will lose their house, beach house, farm or vacant block.  Alienated land, i.e. land owned, will only come into Aboriginal hands if it is purchased for Aborigines by Aborigines on the open market.

ACCOMMODATION OF MINING INTERESTS

I have no reason to doubt the statement by the Chamber of Mines of Western Australia that:

With mineral production in Western Australia contributing some three billion dollars a year to the State economy, the mining industry is vital to maintaining our high standard of living.

I take this to refer to our material standard of living rather than to other standards which may not be so high despite our striving and good will.

In relation to mining there are four separate issues to consider.

OWNERSHIP OF MINERALS

The Australian Mining Industry Council has told the Seaman Inquiry:

With very few and minor exceptions, rights in minerals are not vested in landowners or lessees in Australia.  The general approach adopted in this country for more than a century has been that minerals belong to all people through the crown.

If the crown did own all minerals, I could not see a substantive case for vesting ownership of minerals in Aboriginal land holders.  But what about these few and minor exceptions, these people who got title to land under some provisions a century ago.  Surely if there is to be a class of persons (no matter how small that class) who are to own the minerals in their land, that class should include traditional Aboriginal communities whose moral claim to the land and all that is in it must be as strong as that of any other person in the community.

To be just, the law should either abolish the exceptions or include traditional aboriginal owners amongst them. ⁽²⁾

LAND OWNERS' CONSENT TO MINING

The Chamber of Mines has said "The Government must retain the overall authority to grant or deny access for exploration and mining in all parts of Western Australia".  To date the Western Australian Parliament in exercising its law-making powers has legislated such that "The great majority of Western Australians have enjoyed the power of veto over mining on their land".  In fact the Australian Mining Industry Council has seen the W.A. provision as creating "inappropriate de facto mineral rights attaching to cultivated land" as well as to freehold land in towns and cities.

What is called for is an accommodation of conflicting interests.  Generally the W.A. law favours the right of freeholders and private landholders over that of the miners to come without permission for prospecting and mining.  I presume most people here would want the power to keep miners off their land when that land is being used for residential purposes or the like.

I understand there is now agitation to amend mining laws generally in this State so that mining will be possible on cultivated lands without the owners' consent.  While the law remains as it is, surely Aborigines should have the same rights as others to keep miners off their cultivated lands or lands which are used for residential or religious purposes.

With regard to "traditionally orientated Aboriginal people" facing the prospect of mining on their traditional lands, we must accept, as Mr Seaman does, that they are "more deeply affected by mining proposals than members of the broader community".  While prepared to allow initial exploratory work by miners on aboriginal land which is not cultivated land or land for residential or religious purposes, Mr Seaman says that an Aboriginal veto over mine development with provision for a parliamentary veto on the veto "should be faced and accepted".  This would seem to be the appropriate balancing of interests if we remember that mining disrupts more than the land of traditional Aboriginal community;  it can disrupt the community itself and its traditional way of life with violation of the land, readily available alcohol and single men the occasional one of whom is looking for his version of a good time.

COMPENSATION

Generally, a miner need only pay compensation for disruption to the land.  A farmer or pastoralist with a large holding, part of which is being mined, is compensated for this because it is the only significant damage he suffers.  As indicated, a traditional Aboriginal community may suffer much more.  If that suffering is with regard to what we see as legitimate concerns and aspirations of the community, our legal system will be more just if it protects those aspirations or allows the payment of compensation for any infringement of these aspirations.  Here this can be done simply by allowing an Aboriginal community to negotiate a fee for the commencement of mining.  Just as compensation for a lost leg does not replace a leg, so too compensation does not replace the now disturbed traditional community life.  It only compensates for it.  Just as the perceived folly of how some paraplegics expend their quantum claims does not negate the validity of their claim, neither would that of any Aboriginal community.  Once again the law would be aimed at the accommodation of conflicting claims to land and resources, and the provision of compensation to the individual community when its interests are to give way to the common good, which is achieved through mining -- or so it is said.

ROYALTIES

Generally, royalties are paid to the crown.  Mr Seaman has recommended that royalty payments be diverted from the crown by an environmental authority to other Aboriginal communities (if any) affected by the mining other than the community which happens to be the owner of the land on which the mining has occurred and which would have had the opportunity to negotiate an agreement with the miner by way of compensations.

While the details of these provisions are yet to be worked out by Mr Seaman, the general principles which have been postulated seem quite acceptable.  The matter now comes to this.  Whereas previously the law took no account of Aboriginal interests in land in determining mining applications etc., Aboriginal interests are now to be considered.  Aboriginal landholders are to be treated as other landholders in the State who have title to similar pieces of land.  In the particular case of traditional Aboriginal communities which will have inalienable freehold over their communal lands, those communities should be able to negotiate payments for disruption to their community life, and surrounding communities should be able to share in royalties to the extent that their lives have been disrupted.

POWERS OF THE COMMONWEALTH AND STATE GOVERNMENTS

In the last decade, any discussion about government action in relation to Aborigines has been clouded by consideration of Federal-State relations, and in particular by concern for what is erroneously called "States' rights".  It is high time in this complex area of social planning and responsibility that this concern was put to rest.  States do not have rights -- neither does the Commonwealth in this context.  Only people have rights.

There has never been any doubt about the power of the States to make laws with respect to Aborigines and their land.  Under the Australian Constitution the Commonwealth Parliament did not originally have power to make laws with respect to Aborigines.

In fact, the Constitution originally contained only two references to the Aboriginal people.  Both were dismissive.  One provision was an enigmatic directive that Aborigines were not to be counted in reckoning the number of people in the Commonwealth or in any State.  Both provisions were amended by the 1967 Referendum which was carried overwhelmingly.  In the words of one of the High Court Justices who determined the Franklin Dam Case, this amendment of the Constitution was "an affirmation of the will of the Australian people that the odious policies of oppression and neglect of Aboriginal citizens were to be at an end."  Another Judge suggested that it had been made clear that there was a need for acceptable laws and policies "to mitigate the effects of past barbarism".  These statements are suggestive that the creation of a new Commonwealth power in these circumstances carries with it the imposition of Commonwealth responsibilities.

So, though the issue of Aboriginal land rights is one of primary concern to the State Parliament, it is an issue which requires attention and perhaps even legislative action by the Commonwealth Parliament to make up the shortfall in any State measures which fail adequately to protect the rights and aspirations of Western Australian Aborigines.  Such action could not be seen as an interference with state rights but as the protection at a national level of the rights of Western Australian citizens who happen to be Aboriginal.

Thus consideration must be given to the recent statements of Mr Holding that any legislation comply with the requirements spelt out in his address to the Parliament on December 8, 1983.

THE ROLE OF CHURCHES

The Seaman Inquiry is a public inquiry charged with inquiring into the needs, rights and aspirations of the State's Aborigines to land and the protection of sacred sites.  A resolution of the issues requires a clear statement of the legitimate aspirations of Aborigines and others who would be affected by the legal recognition and protection of these aspirations.  It may even require consideration of the future common good and of the justice of our whole system of land tenure and access to valuable mineral resources.

Though the churches have a special concern for the poorest of the poor, they are not to be seen as spokesperson for the Aboriginal people.  Hopefully, they can discharge the function of advocate if that is desired by particular Aboriginal groups and if none others are available to do the task.  And of course, we must act as watchdog for the interests of the least advantaged in our society.

Pastors concerned for the welfare of Aboriginal people are only too well aware of the need for security in land for Aboriginal communities.  Pastors and all concerned Christians are only too well aware of the need for a legal order which is just and protective of what all citizens, no matter what their cultural or religious beliefs, regard as precious or sacred.  If that need is not met, we will surrender ourselves to mob rule and the pursuit of the holy dollar whatever the cost.  I have suggested that the major recommendations of the Seaman Discussion Paper can go far to recognising and protecting Aboriginal interests and aspirations to land.  That can be done with little, if any, cost to anybody.  I think a balancing of interests is possible with regard to mining.

Our job as Christians must be to consider the arguments rationally and without emotion, and to consider how much we as individuals or as a society should be prepared to concede to the Aboriginal people even if it got to the stage of costing us something.  At the moment this land is big enough to accommodate the interests of us all without need for the tailoring of aspirations.  It is only our tolerance of those who are different that does not extend as far as it should.  Are there some things we count so precious that even the national interest, continuous economic growth and our standard of living ought to give way?  At the moment I suspect that this is a hypothetical question because I doubt that the Seaman recommendations at this stage would cost any of us anything.  So what is all the fuss?

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Bargaining:  a pragmatic view

The argument over Aboriginal land rights is one of the saddest political passages in recent years.  The issue has added to racial tensions which were never far below the surface.  Among whites I have heard more wild accusation and hatred by both sides than on any issue since the Whitlam dismissal.

The issue and the Aborigines are exploited on the one hand by ideologues wedded to proving the idyllic existence of noble savages or obstructing capitalist mining companies, and on the other hand by racial bigots and politicians trying to capitalise on bigotry.  In the middle are men and women who would exhibit good will if information were less coloured by hatred and opportunism.

There could be ground within which to strike bargains.  Aborigines, miners and pastoralists don't want exactly the same things so it is possible for all sides to get most of what they want by horse trading.  Like any bargaining, the threat of getting nothing will be the assurance of goodwill and compromise.

It should be recognised by now that several principal spokesmen don't want an optimal solution -- their interest is in the fight itself.  To some extent people must be judged by the fruit they bear.

My purpose is not to design the optimal solution to the impasse.  That can only be done by those with direct interests -- each conceding those points which for them are least important and holding to those which are most important.  What I want to do is to suggest the room for compromise, and question attitudes which harm a gentle people and important industries.

Here goes:  My first proposition is that Aborigines are a conquered people who feel aggrieved and that conquerors who are generous to those whom they have defeated save themselves a lot of trouble.  The Aborigines deserve more respect than is usually accorded them by Whites.  Had we not stopped the Japanese on the Kokoda Trail and in the Coral Sea, I can't say how I would have behaved but I like to think that I would have been a reluctant collaborator.

Aborigines lived in genetic isolation for thousands of years and it would be surprising if their genetic distinction did not go beyond skin colour and nose shape to include aptitudes.  This does not make them superior to Caucasians or inferior;  just different.  The relevance of this point is that it may be very difficult for them to slot into a society which is Caucasian to its boot straps.  Their failure to cope with European ways argues for experimentation with other ways.

Although Europeans of our great-grandparents' generation may have treated Aborigines badly, particularly when assessed by today's standards, that is not a reason for us to feel guilty or pay reparations to different Aborigines.  The case for granting land to Aborigines rests on the grounds of humanity and practicality, not history.

Australian governments grant special rights to many classes of people;  all at some cost to the rest of the community.  The aged and invalids have pensions, the unemployed and students have benefits, uncompetitive industries get subsidies and tariffs, trade unionists are immune from certain legal proceedings, and so far women have not been conscripted in time of military crisis.  Although life would be fairer without many of these laws, we should recognise that most laws discriminate between classes of people.  To discriminate by race is no less reasonable than sex, age, health, unionisation, employment status or industry.  At least in the case of land rights discrimination transfers benefits fairly consistently from strong to weak.

Australian law already recognises many types of property right including several differing land titles.  Australian society is capable of dealing with one or several more.  However it cannot cope well with uncertain titles.

Since the granting of land rights to Northern Territory Aborigines, mineral exploration has almost stopped even on non-land-right crown land.  Were it not to be resumed, it is likely that the loss to all Australians, including most Aborigines who don't have land, would be great.  There seem to be two problems.  One is the fear that an Aboriginal claim will emerge wherever a mineral strike is made, and the other is the extent of the opportunity for delaying tactics.  Interest rates of 14 percent will kill even quite good prospects if several years are interposed between outlays and first returns.

In that it leaves too much in the air, Northern Territory land right law is not ideal.  One person's property rights inevitably affect others' rights but as Territory Aborigines can claim crown land by reference to the vague criterion of traditional community affiliation nobody can know where he stands.  Geographical limits should be set.  If later parliaments wish to change them they can, paying full compensation to the losing party.

Finally there is the nature of the titles themselves.  A form of easement giving Aborigines access, living rights, and the right to make certain rules concerning matters like alcohol and wildlife, will give Aborigines what they need from vast tracts of land.  At the other extreme, for clearly defined sacred sites perpetual ownership vested in a class of people is reasonable;  in other cases freehold;  in yet others crown lease and so on.

Mineral rights can rest either with the Aborigines or the Crown, and the right can be full or qualified, but it must be clear.  I find it hard to believe that in the long run the Aborigines will be harder to get along with than governments.  Consider the way Bass Strait oil has been taxed, the retrospective loss of Hancock Prospecting's iron ore find, or present treatment of uranium deposits.

Aboriginal land rights are being extended to most States.  I think they should be, but on a more workable basis than in the Northern Territory.  It is time the expression "unacceptable" was dropped in favour of some hard-headed horse trading.

---

ENDNOTES

1.  At the time Fr Brennan's paper was presented, Mr Paul Seaman QC was conducting an enquiry into Aboriginal land title in W.A.  He had distributed a discussion paper.  In the event the State Government rejected key recommendations of the discussion paper and the final reoort.

2.  The State Government elected to retain crown ownership of minerals on aboriginal lands.

Guideposts for the Nation

Our Heritage and Australia's Future
Edited by Jim Ramsay,
Schwartz & Wilkinson.  RRP $16.95

DR HEWSON'S Mother of All Recovery Plans would, if implemented, come to nought unless, nationally, we get (as they say) the fundamentals right.  And that, essentially, is what this collection of essays sets out to achieve:  the collective wisdom of some prominent Australians successfully focuses on issues which, if not resolved, will leave this country in a hole which no Hewson or like plan can fill.

Historically, in this lucky country, we have not been that good at objective self-assessment.  Other than on the sporting field, we too readily accept mediocrity.  Mr Hawke's mission to establish Australia as the Clever Country, while an admirable goal, is pretty much "pie in the sky" talk.  All the more reason for informed, public-minded people to speak out on things as they are, rather than painting idyllic but unreal scenes.

The contributors to Our Heritage and Australia's Future were asked, during 1988, to deliver papers at a series of seminars organised by the 1988 Heritage Association -- a loose coalition of, principally, conservative-minded groups -- to restore balance to the "official" Australian Bicentennial Authority's guilt-laden program.  Many of the papers were revised and updated for this book.

In the foreword, Sir Paul Hasluck welcomes "discussion that raises awkward questions about what sort of nation we are, how we came that way and where we are going next".  But contrary to the claim by the Editor, Jim Ramsay, the collective result is, arguably, too predominantly a conservative view of the state of the nation.  Despite the eminence of the contributors, the cultural conservatism of their message will be unlikely to attract a warm reception among our public opinion-makers.  That, I expect, is quibbling, for doubtless, the intention was to avoid a mere debate about where we have gone wrong and about how we might rediscover our legal, political, cultural and religious roots.

In order of their appearance (and topic) the 1991 revised contributions are from Sir Charles Court (British heritage);  Dr David Kemp MP (Political/civil liberties);  Dame Leonie Kramer (our children's education);  Professor Geoffrey Blainey (one nation or a cluster or tribes?);  Senator Robert Hill (Asia-Pacific Security);  Michael O'Connor (Defence);  B.A. Santamaria (the crisis of Christianity);  Rev Dr John Williams and Babette Francis (family), Professor Mark Cooray (the rule of law);  Assistant Police Commissioner Bill Robertson (police and the law);  Dr Michael James (constitutional reform);  Hugh Morgan (private enterprise) and, finally, John Stone (economic freedom).  Quite clearly the book gathers together theoreticians who, above all, are also doers -- rarely the situation in what passes for serious discussion in academia of Australia's future.  That future is not too bright, on the evidence presented in this tightly-structured book.  Perhaps, and this is grossly unfair to the other participants in the forum, three of the writers -- Court, Santamaria and Blainey -- explore best, and most fluently, the dilemma which is at the heart of our national malaise:  sabotage of our past;  the false god of perverted multiculturalism;  and the virtual abandonment of religious values -- even by the churches.

The whole book dispassionately diagnoses the "sleeping sickness" rampant in the nation.  Positively, the authors jointly provide guideposts to bring us back to reality.  As I read these writers, it became clear that many of our problems and community inadequacies are man- (or is it person-) made;  yet, if we have the collective will, they can be turned around.  In this direction, the Hewson recovery package could be a start.  Unfortunately, we are an ill-disciplined, spoilt society -- living these past decades beyond our means, economically and spiritually.

The insights and concerns of Our Heritage and Australia's Future are an apt starting point.  But it is only us, collectively, who can turn our nation around.  Whether it is with Hewson, Keating, whomever, I do not particularly care.  These 14 prominent Australians have put in frightening, demanding place a springboard for our national counter-attack.  Well, that is the hope.

New Men and Real Men

Iron John:  A Book About Men
Robert Bly,
Addison Wesley

MYTHIC heroes are not the only people who must venture into dark, mysterious forests.

One of these wilder shores is the Adyar Bookshop in Sydney, tranquil havens strong on crystals and other paraphernalia anathemic to the rugged hearts of the Right.

Nonetheless, it is here that they will find a subtler understanding of "gender politics", including the hysteria now raging in American colleges about date rape and curricula focused on the works of dead white males.

A notable treasure is Robert Bly's Iron John:  A Book About Men, about as comforting a broadside as you are likely to find against the idea that men must be reconstructed, and that a father's true role is to pitch in postnatally with nappy changing and formula furing.

Like the relatively few conservatives who grapple with socio-sexual issues, Bly is a 1960s rebel grown wiser.  For the last 20-odd years, he has been living in Minnesota, brooding about the male role, being a Jungian analyst and producing the odd slim volume, mostly of poetry, while American publishers otherwise turned up their noses just as they did with that other heretic, Camille (Sexual Personae) Paglia.

Throughout the 1980s, Bly conducted workshops for fraught American males, exposing them to large therapeutic doses of myth and fairytale.  Notably the Brothers Grimm, from whom he takes his exemplary story -- Iron John, or Eisenhans.

Iron John is a passionate, forceful yet sensitive creature rather on the lines of Zorba the Greek (far removed from Sylvester Stallone), whose qualities are totally missing in the modern Soft Male, those "lovely, valuable people ... not interested in harming the earth or starting wars".  The trouble is, though, that the Soft Male is incapable of starting much at all, so terrified of being labelled a sexist pig that he has fallen into an impotent puppyhood, trotting at the heels of a radiantly energetic woman.

Well, so she seems.  Jungian psychiatrists are not the only ones who have noticed that life with a Soft Male, eternally asking "what would you like me to do now, dear", both in bed and behind the vacuum cleaner, can set women yearning for dark decisive truckies -- a phenomenon the French seem to have noticed as early as 1968, going on Louis Malle's film of the period, Milou in May.

Bly's diagnosis is that his unhappy audiences lack a necessary fierceness and resolve -- not to go gunning for Commies or beating up poofters, nor looking under beds for Soft Women and Hard Men to savage on their mistresses' behalf.  Instead, they must learn "joyful decisiveness".

Far from exerting a malevolent patriarchy, Bly says men, especially fathers, have been going downhill ever since the Industrial Revolution when they were no longer able to take adolescent boys aside to discover various male competencies in workshops, fields and forests.  Instead of developing esteem and a sense of what masculinity is all about, boys were increasingly reared indoors by mothers, imbibing the idea that what fathers did was grubby and inferior compared with the more spiritual and cultured yearnings of women.

These cravings for gentility and the sanitisation of life, so marked in today's baby boomers, are nothing new.  They are the dark flipside of education and upward mobility, and not surprisingly, D.H. Lawrence, reared in industrial England by a dominant mother, emerges as an early example of Soft Malehood, albeit one who by mid-life was working overtime on the problem.  Such a boy, Bly maintains, can take one of two routes -- he identifies with women, shares their confidences and feels ashamed of his imputed crimes, or he determines to acquire what he imagines, erroneously, are proper manly attributes.  Both courses are equally disastrous.

In metaphysical terms, the absent father causes a vacuum to appear in the boy's psyche, which rapidly fills with demons.  Never trust anyone over 30, especially old men wanting to send you to Vietnam, and otherwise confirm your worst suspicions that age and treachery will beat youth and talent every time.

Hence the anguish over President Kennedy's death, the boos for Darth Vader in Star Wars, and the popularity of Dead Poets' Society or anything else starring Robin Williams.

Bly draws widely on coming to manhood in other societies -- Amerindian, African, Aboriginal, Viking -- with special emphasis on the role of older males generally, and the often highly feminine values which underlie their apparent "patriarchy".  He makes nice observations, too, about television and comic strips, where the male has declined into an ineffectual dolt who spends his evenings slumped on the sofa while his wife and children merrily outwit him.

Iron John, which offers a solution to this malaise, is the usual story about a king's son.  When the neighbouring forest becomes a sort of Bermuda Triangle in which hunters and hounds disappear, the king's men drag a pool and discover the culprit, a wild shaggy man whom they promptly lock in a cage in the palace courtyard.

In fairytales, anything found near water or in a forest is trying to tell us something -- Lawrence's Mellors in the woods, Thomas Mann's lissom Taddeuz on the beach.  And in this case it is that to release Iron John, who has very decently handed back the lad's golden ball, the boy must steal the key from under the Queen's pillow.

Most of the young men in Bly's workshops are horrified by this.  Why can't the boy just ask his mother nicely?  Create some kind of consensus or win:win situation?

Sorry, says Bly.  To start on the path to manhood, a boy must be much tougher.  Decisive.  Even devious.  He cites Hamlet, who despite some ravings and trickery turns wimpish whenever he comes near his mother, and eventually drives Ophelia crazy.  Soft males are bad news for young women, although the more educated ones, who remain out of touch with their bodies until 30-something, seem slow to make the connection.  (Why else all those books about indecisive, non-committing men?)

The king's son, however, is bold enough to steal the key and scarper with Iron John, who sets him to guard a sacred pool.  Inevitably, he fails, and is sent to work as a scullion at another royal household.  But should he need help, all he has to do is call, and Iron John, who has abundant treasure, will come to his rescue.

There now begins what Bly calls the "ashes period", something primitive cultures understand well, allowing young males a time of hibernation -- Vikings called it "cinder biting" -- which encourages introspection and self-discovery before springing forth with new vigour.  Contrast western society, where a boy who heeds this instinct and drops out of university is considered doomed and disturbed.

By the end of the story, the king's son has come to the attention of the king's daughter, and has single-handedly overcome the king's enemies in the forest on three occasions with the aid of a horse and armour magically provided by Iron John.

The message is that to become a man, a boy needs to get in touch with a wilder, gutsier, more intuitive side of himself, which can not be found sitting at the feet of women.  It can only be learnt from close encounters with older men, and breaking free into an ecstasy of discovery.  Some, though, seem to attempt it on their own, like the boy in Peter Schaffer's Equus, whose rituals by night with the horses brings home to the psychiatrist the aridity of his own soul.

Like the similar transcendent moments experienced by male shamans, and by initiates through history, this is a world away from adopting the feminine values of women, the only alternative we can now imagine to becoming a hard, dry economic rationalist or an entrepreneurial Rambo.

But how it is to be achieved in a society where myths exist only to be exploded, and where fathers and other older men spend their days in high-rise offices, allegedly inflicting misery on other people though probably just being miserable themselves, is the big question.

Bly admits he was lucky -- his father was a farmer who provided many hours of warm male communication.  But he worries that with even mothers now, being absent, a similar demon-filled vacuum may soon appear in young girls, causing them to suspect and vilify older women.  (Soon?  Educated virgins have been rubbishing traditional women for years, and can even find reasons to attack non-traditional ones, especially if successful).

Perhaps it will change as the information society begins to put more fathers, not to sav mothers.  back in the home, albeit beSide a modem and a bleeper, where children can see what they do all day.

When Iron John appeared in the UK in January last year, it coincided with some public outrage about Prince Charles teaching Prince Harry to drive a Landrover around Sandringham -- exactly the sort of thing Bly would class as meaningful, necessary male bonding.  Yet no connection was made, and today, most of Australia remains in its own enchanted forest where boys never grow past needing Daddies to give bottles and take them to kindergarten, and where initiation rites are something civilised societies need to outgrow.

No wonder we are haunted by dreams of damp, shaggy men rattling the bars of their cages, demanding that attention be paid to them.