Greece is where Australians now look to discover the consequences of unsustainable government spending. But you do not have to go half way around the world to find out what happens when the government cannot or will not pay back its loans.
Instead of Alexis Tsipras, the left-wing populist prime minister of Greece in 2015, we can look to Jack Lang, the left-wing populist Labor premier of New South Wales in 1931. Tsipras refuses to repay the Germans, while Lang refused to repay the British. The Greek crisis is the product of two decades of deliberate government policy, while Lang faced the Great Depression. Lang was actually smarter than Tsipras. Lang proposed New South Wales create its own currency that could have been devalued to make his state's exports more competitive.
As yet we don't know how Greece will play out. But we do know what happened in New South Wales. In 1932 Lang was sacked by the governor Philip Game after Lang attempted to repudiate the debts of the New South Wales government. At the subsequent election Labor was thrashed and went from 55 MPs out of 90 in the lower house to just 24 MPs. Lang was fiercely anti-communist, and because of this he was expelled from the ALP in 1943. Lang was re-admitted to the Labor Party in 1971 and became a hero to the young Paul Keating. Lang died in 1975, six weeks before another Labor leader was sacked.
Of course the problem with politicians talking about Jack Lang instead of Alexis Tsipras is that so slight is our knowledge of our own history, that most people wouldn't have a clue who Jack Lang was. And for this we can blame our universities.
Last week I released a report The End of History ... In Australian Universities. The report analysed all of the 739 history subjects taught in 2014 by the history departments of Australia's 34 tertiary institutions.
Economic history is literally non-existent in the history departments, while political history has all but disappeared. It is almost impossible for an undergraduate at an Australian university to study the economics and politics of the Great Depression — one of the seminal episodes in this country's history.
ORIGINS IN BRITAIN
Australia's political and cultural institutions have their origins in Britain. But out of the 739 history subjects taught last year, only 15 covered British history. More Australian universities offered film studies as part of their history program (13 universities) than offered anything on British history (10 universities).
The vast bulk of history subjects offered by our universities are about late twentieth-century Australian and world history. In our universities Australian history only started in 1972.
An analysis of the specialist history subjects offered is even more depressing. Academic history increasingly revolves around sociology and popular culture. There's no space for economic history in any history department, but there is room for 15 film studies subjects, 14 feminism subjects, and 12 sexuality subjects. And these are only the subjects included in history degrees. There are dozens more gender subjects in other arts departments.
There's been much bemoaning over the quality of the political and policy debate in Australia. Some of that criticism is overstated. But if there has been a decline in the condition of public discussion, it might be because an understanding of context and the background to our current policy challenges is almost entirely lacking. The absence of a common historical knowledge means our political leaders can only talk to the public about what's on the radio at the moment and what's on the front page of the morning newspaper.
This is not the first time in 200 years of white settlement we've faced a fall in commodity prices and the prospect of declining living standards. Economics has decisively shaped Australia's politics which is why it is such a tragedy economic history no longer exists in history departments. It's no coincidence that our three greatest historians Edward Shann, Keith Hancock, and Geoffrey Blainey are all economic historians.
History students might know the name Blainey, but in all likelihood, there is as much chance of them knowing who Shann and Hancock were as there is of them being taught about Jack Lang.
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