Betraying the Victims: The "Stolen Generations" Report

Backgrounder

The seriousness of the "stolen generations" issue should not be underestimated, and Aborigines are fully entitled to demand an acknowledgement of the wrongs that many of them suffered at the hands of various authorities.  But both those who were wronged and the nation as a whole are also entitled to an honest and rigorous assessment of the past.  This should have been the task of the "stolen generations" inquiry.  Unfortunately, however, the Inquiry's report, Bringing Them Home, is one of the most intellectually and morally irresponsible official documents produced in recent years.

In this Backgrounder, Ron Brunton carefully examines a number of matters covered by the report, such as the representativeness of the cases it discussed, its comparison of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal child removals, and its claim that the removal of Aboriginal children constituted "genocide".  He shows how the report is fatally compromised by serious failings.

Amongst many others, these failings include omitting crucial evidence, misrepresenting important sources, making assertions that are factually wrong or highly questionable, applying contradictory principles at different times so as to make the worst possible case against Australia, and confusing different circumstances under which removals occurred in order to give the impression that nearly all separations were "forced".

INTRODUCTION

THE INQUIRY AND ITS BACKGROUND

Bringing Them Home, the report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, addresses a very serious and difficult issue in Australia's recent past. ⁽¹⁾  For a number of years, indigenous organisations and their supporters have been arguing that previous policies which resulted in Aboriginal children being taken from their families were responsible for some of the major social problems in contemporary Aboriginal communities.  The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which reported in 1991, found that of the 99 individual cases it investigated, 43 "experienced childhood separation from their natural families through intervention by the state, mission organisations or other institutions". ⁽²⁾  This finding gave added impetus to calls for an investigation that would challenge widespread public ignorance about these practices and recommend appropriate responses from government.

The Inquiry was conducted by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) after receiving a reference from the Attorney-General in the former Labor Government, Michael Lavarch, in May 1995.  HREOC's then president, Sir Ronald Wilson, and Mick Dodson, then the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, had primary responsibility for the Inquiry, but they were assisted by a number of other Commissioners, including indigenous women appointed for each region visited by the Inquiry (page 18).

AN UNDERSTANDABLE LEGACY OF ABORIGINAL BITTERNESS

The forcible removal of innocent children from caring parents by government or church officials is indefensible in a liberal democratic society, as is any legislation or programme which uses racial or ethnic status as the major or sole determinant of the way in which people will be treated.  It is unfortunate that some commentators who would normally stress the importance of the family as an institution, or warn of the dangers of unbridled state intervention into private spheres, seem insensitive to these matters. ⁽³⁾  There can be no doubt that in many parts of the country during particular periods of this century Aboriginal parents had an understandable fear that the authorities might take their children with very little or no excuse, and that this is an important reason behind the legacy of Aboriginal bitterness that other Australians need to comprehend and overcome.

A proper recognition of the injustices that Aborigines suffered is not just a matter of creating opportunities for reparations, despite the emphasis that the Bringing Them Home report places on monetary compensation (for example, pages 302-313;  Recommendations 14-20).  A civilised liberal society needs to approach its own history with candour.  Amongst other reasons, this is necessary to help in preserving the integrity of core moral principles that may have been compromised, and to provide substance to the abiding hope that positive lessons can be learnt from previous mistakes.

Bringing Them Home makes a number of eloquent statements along these lines.  It quotes the words of a member of the Chilean National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, established to investigate the Pinochet regime's violations of human rights:

[S]ociety cannot simply block out a chapter of its history;  it cannot deny the facts of its past, however differently these may be interpreted.  Inevitably, the void would be filled with lies or with conflicting, confusing versions of the past.  A nation's unity depends on a shared identity, which in turn depends largely on a shared memory.  The truth also brings a measure of healthy social catharsis and helps to prevent the past from reoccurring (page 307).

WHY THE INQUIRY BETRAYED ABORIGINES WHO SUFFERED INJUSTICE

Because the issues at stake in the "stolen generations" inquiry are so important, and because these involve a number of matters of ongoing and heated contention, it was imperative that the Inquiry did everything in its power to ensure that its accounts of past practices and its conclusions were beyond any reasonable question.  Otherwise the painful experiences which the Inquiry sought to make known could be easily dismissed or ignored, as could their contemporary implications.  But the Commissioners unwisely seem to have interpreted their role as being that of advocates, providing the media with emotive commentaries on evidence as it was presented and indicating that they would be promoting the findings irrespective of the Government's views. ⁽⁴⁾

And unfortunately, anyone who expects to find a rigorous, sober and factual assessment of the past in Bringing Them Home will be sorely disappointed.  The report is a most unworthy and tendentious document.  Amongst its many faults, it is poorly argued, it demonstrates considerable intellectual and moral confusion, it applies inconsistent principles at different times so as to create a "damned if you do/damned if you don't" situation, it misrepresents a number of its sources and ignores crucial information, and it readily makes major assertions which are either factually wrong or unsupported by appropriate evidence.  It is immaterial whether these defects are a result of a deliberate attempt to distort, or whether they stem from the Inquiry's inability to bring the requisite judgement and analytical skills to its task.  When accounts that purport to make people aware of injustices misrepresent events, or omit relevant matters for reasons of partiality, or make unfounded claims, they dishonour the very people whose interests they claim to uphold.  Bringing Them Home betrays the Aboriginal victims of the past almost as surely as would a report which attempted to deny their experiences completely.

These are serious charges, and they are not made lightly.  In this Backgrounder I will attempt to demonstrate that they are warranted.  Although considerations of length preclude a comprehensive examination of all the report's flaws, I believe that there are sufficient grounds to justify treating Bringing Them Home as one of the most intellectually and morally irresponsible reports to be presented to an Australian government in recent years.

CASES COMING WITHIN THE SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY

DISTORTION AND CONFUSION IN DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN DIFFERENT KINDS OF SEPARATIONS

The Inquiry's terms of reference required that it examine separations that occurred under "compulsion, duress or undue influence".  The report attempts to distinguish between these three conditions.

Compulsion is used to cover the forcible or coerced removal of a child, whether legal or illegal, and included court-ordered removals (page 5).  Duress is used to cover situations that involved threats or moral pressure.  The report states that this does not exclude acceptance by those affected.  It also states that "definitions [of duress] commonly refer to illegally applied compulsion" (page 6;  emphasis in original).

This leads to some confusion, because the report goes on to discuss whether Aboriginal parents in remote locations who agreed to sending their children to schools in distant centres were submitting to duress.  It argues that while one interpretation would be that the families were being given appropriate opportunities to have their children educated, "another focuses on the power relations between the makers of these offers and the families.  Viewed in that way there was clearly an element of duress" (page 8).  It states that where the promise of education was linked to a threat -- for example, a charge of neglect -- if the offer was not accepted, "the ensuing separation was clearly forced" (page 9), although it is uncertain whether the authors think this means that it was a case of "compulsion" or "duress".  The report notes that the circumstances of offers of education are generally not clear, and claims that it has not assumed that all these removals occurred under duress.  However, no examples have been provided that might give an indication of whether the Inquiry considered cases of children being separated for education at distant schools which it judged as falling outside its terms of reference, or how relevant criteria might have been applied to make such judgements.  Certainly, there are few grounds for thinking that the Inquiry was cautious in accepting such cases, given that it responded to submissions noting that parents were free to keep in touch with their children -- and that the children sometimes returned home for the holidays -- by stating "Realistically, however, there was no likelihood that Indigenous families would have the material resources to ensure continuous regular contact" (page 8).

There is another important point relating to the education of children.  The report is not consistent in its attitude towards legislation and practices that distinguished between Aborigines and non-Aborigines.  Sometimes this is denounced.  Thus for example, it states that "from about 1950 the continuation of separate laws for Indigenous children breached the international prohibition of racial discrimination" (page 277).  Yet at other times it accepts such distinctions as "special measures" under section 8 of the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act 1975, although it is certainly arguable whether section 8 -- which refers back to Article 1.4 of The International Convention of All Forms of Racial Discrimination -- would really apply in the circumstances it suggests (for example, page 312).  However, given that compulsory education has long been required for non-Aboriginal children, and "duress" applied to the parents of children who do not attend school, it is hard to see how the report can simultaneously complain about the continuation of separate laws for Aboriginal children and condemn compulsory education for them.  Most jurisdictions had compulsory school attendance for all Aboriginal children by 1950, although it was difficult to enforce this in some remote areas. ⁽⁵⁾  (What was really discriminatory and shameful was the degree to which schools were racially segregated in some States.) ⁽⁶⁾

The report is even more confused when it comes to "undue influence".  It quotes a dictionary definition which indicates this occurs when a "person is induced not to act of his own free will", and it states that the relevant meaning would be "putting improper pressure on the family to induce the surrender of the children" (page 9).  The report adds that the relationship between the family and the "inducer" has to be a relationship of influence, and claims that this would be the case in relations with government administrators, closed settlement managers, and any "spiritual adviser" (page 9), which seems to cover nearly all the circumstances under which removal might legally be effected.  But it then goes on to give examples which involve outright deception.  So it is not clear whether any suggestion or action from people in a relationship of influence that led to separation was a case of "undue influence" -- because their power or status invariably compromised an Aborigine's ability to exercise his or her free will -- or whether this term only applies to certain kinds of suggestions.  (It is also worth noting that "undue influence" is a term that may be appropriate to describe the attempts by some pastoralists to preserve the status quo, and to oppose any moves to educate Aboriginal children, against Aboriginal desires in the 1950s and early '60s "to live more like 'white' people", such as the anthropologist Ruth Fink described for the Murchison region of Western Australia.) ⁽⁷⁾

WRONGLY SPEAKING AS THOUGH ALL SEPARATIONS WERE "FORCED"

Despite the difficulties that these definitions present, the report adopts a terminological tactic that can only be seen as highly tendentious.  It uses the term "forcible removal" for all cases of separation covered by the above terms, supposedly for "ease of reference", and to contrast with removals which were truly voluntary on the part of parents, or where the child was orphaned and "there was no alternative Indigenous carer to step in" (page 5).  But the report's statements would seem to leave very little room indeed for "truly voluntary" decisions on the part of Aborigines.

The confusion and distortion apparent in some of the report's discussion about the kinds of cases which fell within the terms of reference make it difficult to feel confident that the Inquiry adopted a judicious approach to its task.  Indeed, the only circumstances in which specific cases are presented as falling outside the Inquiry's scope involve children being brought up by relatives other than parents, because the Inquiry adopted a broad definition of "Indigenous family" (page 12).

UNSATISFACTORY TREATMENT OF THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN REMOVED

The above considerations need to be kept in mind when assessing the report's discussion of the numbers involved, and its statement that "we can conclude with confidence that between one in three and one in ten Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities in the period from approximately 1910 until 1970" (page 37).  Nevertheless, some commentators seem to have cast off any sense of caution when it comes to numbers.  Thus in an article in The Times Literary Supplement, La Trobe University academic Judith Brett wrote "This century, about 100,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were removed from their families". ⁽⁸⁾  This article, like many others expressing a credulous stance towards the Bringing Them Home report, also gives the impression that all the removals included in this inflated number involved the forcible separation from caring parents.  This impression is facilitated by the report's unwillingness to attempt any distinction between different kinds of removal in its numerical estimates, or even to suggest that such a breakdown would be conceptually warranted, no matter how difficult it might be to make such estimates.

The risks of placing reliance on the report's statements about the number of children removed are further demonstrated by the fallacious claim that "More recent surveys are likely to understate the extent of removal because many of those removed during the early periods of the practice are now deceased" (page 37).  This would only follow if it could be shown that the death rate of people who were removed was higher than that of people who were not removed -- and if so, it would usually be possible to adjust the removal rates accordingly.  Once the percentage of people in a given age group who were removed has been ascertained in a contemporary survey, this allows an estimate of the number removed during particular periods of time to be calculated.

HOW REPRESENTATIVE ARE THE CASES
DISCUSSED BY THE INQUIRY?

HOW DID THE INQUIRY SUBSTANTIATE ITS FINDINGS?

Obviously, any inquiry is limited to at least some extent by the cases of those who chose to respond to its request to make submissions or provide evidence.  In its Internet site on the World Wide Web HREOC has a page titled "Questions and Answers about 'Stolen Children'", which specifically attempts to rebut the charge that the Inquiry was unrepresentative and that the only people who it spoke to were those who had had bad experiences.  Amongst other points, it claims that as well as taking evidence from a very wide range of people it also "conducted extensive searches and analysis of historical documents and records which substantiated its findings".

It is reasonable to ask for more detailed information to support this claim, particularly in the light of accumulating research pointing to the role of suggestion in creating false memories of events that never actually happened. ⁽⁹⁾  It would be quite understandable, for instance, if in later life some children whose parents really did neglect them -- and the parents themselves -- reinterpreted the circumstances under which authorities intervened in the family. ⁽¹⁰⁾  But we are not told how many of the cases presented in confidential evidence or submissions were checked against documentary records.  While in at least some States, access to the relevant personal records would have required the permission of the individual concerned, it would not have been improper for the Inquiry to have told witnesses who refused such permission that their evidence could not be given the same weight as that of other witnesses.  It is important to know the actual number of cases where checks were attempted, the number where the relevant permission might not have been given -- or where the records had been destroyed or were not readily obtainable -- and the extent to which any checks confirmed significant aspects of the evidence and submissions presented to the Inquiry.  Did the Inquiry, for instance, come across any situations similar to one faced by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, where a Commissioner found important discrepancies between what the mother of a deceased man was now saying and the official files, noting that he found the mother's instructions to her counsel in relation to these matters "odd"? ⁽¹¹⁾

Bringing Them Home does not discuss such issues, nor provide any evidence that the Inquiry attempted to distinguish possibly false or exaggerated claims about experiences and later effects from genuine claims.  Indeed, Sir Ronald Wilson has been quoted as making a statement which seems inconsistent with the claim about substantiation made in HREOC's Internet site:  "I didn't stop, as a judge would have stopped, to ask where's the corroboration.  How could you doubt the authenticity of a story when tears are running down the faces of the storytellers?" ⁽¹²⁾  It is surprising that Sir Ronald, a former High Court judge, did not seem to realise that by asking "Where's the corroboration?" and demonstrating that appropriate corroboration had been sought and obtained, he would be strengthening the cases of witnesses and assuring the credibility of the Inquiry's findings.

DOES THE REPORT MISREPRESENT THE EVIDENCE PRESENTED TO THE INQUIRY?

Bringing Them Home states

The bulk of the evidence to the Inquiry detailed damaging and negative effects.  However, our terms of reference clearly are not confined to these.  The Inquiry did receive some submissions acknowledging the love and care provided by non-Indigenous adoptive families (and foster families to a much lesser extent) or recording appreciation for a high standard of education.  However, all of the witnesses who made these points also expressed their wish that they had not had to make the sacrifices they did (pages 12-13).

Certainly, the impression that one gains from reading the report is almost uniformly bleak.  On my assessment, only fourteen of the approximately 250 quotations from confidential evidence or submissions point to anything like reasonably positive experiences at any stage (numbers 136, 154, 155, 178, 252, 305, 307, 384, 544, 557, 667, 696, 818, 823). ⁽¹³⁾  And with only three exceptions (numbers 178, 252, 307) ⁽¹⁴⁾ these were all qualified by negative experiences, some of them quite overwhelming.

There is no way in which we can readily assess the relationship between this extremely negative portrayal and the experiences of all the children who were removed.  On the one hand, it may provide a fairly representative picture, whereas accounts such as Channel 9's Sunday programme on 10 August 1997, where some Aborigines made unqualified statements in support of their own removal, may be misleading.  On the other hand, it is possible that only people with a certain range of experiences chose to come forward to the Inquiry.  This may have been because those with generally positive experiences did not feel strongly enough to make the effort that would have been required.  Alternatively, they may have felt, rightly or wrongly, that the Inquiry would not be as interested in their accounts as it would be in those from people who had a different story to tell, however much the Inquiry may claim that it sought out all points of view.

There is an even more disturbing possibility -- that for whatever reason, the Inquiry has not faithfully represented the evidence and submissions that were presented to it, and has given greater prominence to the negative accounts.  There are some grounds for suggesting that this is more than a theoretical possibility, despite the Inquiry's acknowledgement, quoted above, that its terms of reference were not confined to examining the negative effects.  One of these grounds is the fact, to be discussed later, that the authors have actually omitted crucial information on another matter from the report so as to give a particular slant to the findings.

UNSATISFACTORY TREATMENT OF THE REASONS FOR THE REMOVAL OF CHILDREN

Other grounds become apparent when considering the question of the reasons behind the taking of children.  The report does acknowledge that at least some removals may have been justified because of dangers to children's welfare.  However these are excused as being "due to the dispossession and dependence of Indigenous families" (page 10), thus continuing a long Australian tradition of belittling the human dignity and moral agency of Aborigines -- and other people in "victim" categories -- by always looking for alibis. ⁽¹⁵⁾  Nevertheless, the report states that such cases still come within its terms of reference, and goes on to make the following claim:

In contrast with the removal of non-Indigenous children, proof of "neglect" was not always required before an Indigenous child could be removed.  Their Aboriginality would suffice.  Therefore, while some removals might be "justifiable" after the event as being in the child's best interests, they often did not need to be justified at the time (page 11).

While the claim that under the relevant legislation removals did not need to be properly justified at the time may be true in most States at particular periods of time, it is certainly not universally true.  For instance, as the report itself notes, under the NSW Aborigines Protection Amending Act 1940 the removal of a child required establishing "to the satisfaction of a Children's Court that the child was 'neglected' or 'uncontrollable'" (page 46).  Similarly, in Western Australia, at least from 1954, when the removal power of the Commissioner for Native Affairs was revoked, "child welfare legislation required a court to be satisfied that the child was destitute or neglected" (page 112). ⁽¹⁶⁾  It is possible to accept that the standards for assessing neglect may have been culturally inappropriate, that many parents had very little hope of contesting court decisions, and that some children who were removed were badly abused in institutions or foster homes (factors which may also have applied to impoverished white families as well).  Nevertheless, the matter of the actual justification given for removal cannot simply be dismissed.  This is because in order to understand the whole sorry story of child removals it needs to be considered in its historical context, and because the report itself suggests that "the issue of justification may be relevant to any remedy that might be contemplated" (page 11).  Furthermore, while legislation at different times may have allowed officials to remove any Aboriginal child without prior judicial scrutiny (page 254), it is important to distinguish between what was permitted -- or forbidden -- under legislation and what actually occurred. ⁽¹⁷⁾

The report deals with the issue of justification in a most unsatisfactory manner.  Certainly, in many cases Inquiry witnesses may have been too young to have known the reasons given for their removal.  But nearly a third of the witnesses were six years old or more when they were removed.  And although some of the relevant files relating to individual removals have been lost or destroyed (page 325), it would also appear that many people have been able to access their own files.  Furthermore, as noted earlier, HREOC claims that the Inquiry conducted extensive searches of historical records and documents.

Nevertheless, only nineteen of the individual witness accounts or their accompanying commentary provide any hint of the reason that was offered for their separation from their families (numbers 82, 112, 133, 154, 155, 156, 163, 191, 213, 284, 316, 384, 504, 553, 667, 766, 776, 818, 851), and nearly all of these impugn or dismiss the supposed reason.  The only cases where a suggestion is given that separation might have been justified are numbers 667, where the witness stated "I don't think Mum had any options.  I don't know where I'd have ended up", (page 64);  and 766, which states that "Jenny grew up in a chaotic family experiencing violence, alcoholism and sexual abuse from her father.  At three and a half years she was placed in foster care" (page 229).  Certainly, it is fair to state that the report attempts to give the impression that the bases for removal were nearly always unjustified.

CASES CONSIDERED BY THE DEATHS IN CUSTODY ROYAL COMMISSION RAISE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PICTURE PRESENTED BY BRINGING THEM HOME

While many people no doubt believe that removals of Aboriginal children were nearly always arbitrary and unjustified, there is another publicly available data base which suggests a much more complex picture -- the cases that came before the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.  No-one reading the publications from the Royal Commission can accuse the commissioners of refusing to acknowledge the harsh treatment that Aborigines have experienced.  Nevertheless, an examination of the 43 cases the Royal Commission considered which involved childhood removals ⁽¹⁸⁾ shows that while many were the results of a callous indifference to the feelings and circumstances of the parents and their children, and an unwillingness to consider alternatives, there were also a significant number in which some defence can be offered for the authorities' actions.  (Of course, this does not mean that the subsequent abuse that children may have suffered in institutions or in foster care, etc., can be ignored or excused.)

Thus, in the case of Clarence Nean, who was removed from his parents in NSW in 1950, Hal Wootten (who was one of the first officials to claim that the taking of children under the assimilation policy might constitute "genocide") ⁽¹⁹⁾ states

the file shows that the Nean children were made wards because of genuine fear for their survival, backed by strongly expressed medical concern.  There is the telling fact that another daughter died in circumstances also judged indicative of neglect ... It should be recorded that after being made a ward, Clarrie was placed with a series of Aboriginal foster parents, themselves living in modest circumstances and identifying as Aboriginals.  There was no attempt to merge him into the white community. ⁽²⁰⁾

Parenthetically, this case points to yet another inadequacy of the Bringing Them Home report.  If separated Aboriginal children were being fostered with Aboriginal families who identified as such, during a time "when even greater numbers of Indigenous children were removed from their families to advance the cause of assimilation" (page 34), the intentions of authorities would seem to have been more complex than the report allows.  Indeed, the fact that Aboriginal children were given to Aboriginal foster parents is implied by the report's own figures that the Aborigines' Welfare Board advertised for foster parents for 150 Aboriginal children in 1950 and that it had been able to have 116 wards fostered by 1958, 90 with non-Indigenous families (page 48).  The report does not comment on these figures.  And despite the claim that "lighter coloured children were sent to institutions for non-Indigenous children or fostered by non-Indigenous families" (page 48), Clarrie Nean was described as being "light" in "caste". ⁽²¹⁾

The cases of Barbara and Fay Yarrie in the late 1960s and early 1970s, also indicate that authorities would seem to have had some justification -- even in contemporary terms -- in believing that serious neglect was occurring, especially as these also involved complaints about the children's welfare from OPAL, an Aboriginal charitable organisation. ⁽²²⁾  Similar considerations apply with Karen O'Rourke, who was initially taken in January 1969 after "police responded to a call from a neighbour and found the three O'Rourke children alone in the house and obviously neglected."  In early March the children were returned to their parents on probation, but two weeks later their non-Aboriginal father "telephoned the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs and requested that a welfare officer come and collect his children as his wife had deserted the matrimonial home." ⁽²³⁾  A number of other cases were more complicated, but they also suggest that the relevant authorities were attempting to make genuine assessments about the welfare of the children concerned, however culturally uninformed these assessments may now seem. ⁽²⁴⁾

At least 15 of the 43 cases involved court-ordered removals to institutions because of delinquent or criminal behaviour.  Again, some of these cases indicate far too great a willingness to institutionalise Aboriginal children for petty offences.  For instance, the man who died at the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth had first been imprisoned for stealing two blocks of chocolate. ⁽²⁵⁾  But others indicate that institutionalisation only occurred after a number of repeat offences and after earlier responses had failed to curb the delinquent behaviour.  Thus Hal Wootten comments in relation to Shane Atkinson:

Given his enormous criminal record by this stage, one has to remind oneself that he was still only 11.  While it was tragic to see such a young child committed to an institution, it has to be acknowledged, in all fairness, that the authorities had not acted precipitately, although they seem to have offered no real help to the family. ⁽²⁶⁾

In another example, Steven Michael was sent to a Mission training farm in 1968 at the age of 10, after committing a number of breaking, entering and stealing offences.  Earlier court appearances had led to him being placed under Native Welfare supervision, but in the custody of his parents and grandmother. ⁽²⁷⁾

However, although there is a long discussion of the juvenile justice system as a basis for contemporary separations in the Bringing Them Home report (pages 489-542), there is virtually no mention of the role that delinquency or criminal offences may have played in earlier separations.  Only one of 143 individual confidential submissions or evidence to the Inquiry which are cited in the report refer to criminal offences as being the reason for a child being removed from his or her family, a fourteen-year-old boy sent to the Turana detention centre in Victoria in the 1980s (458, page 505).

This omission is very puzzling.  If the many hundreds of oral or written testimonies presented to the Inquiry were to any extent representative, it is hard to believe that none of them mentioned that separation occurred because of an offence, or offences, committed by the child.  At one point Bringing Them Home notes that a 1989 survey, which found that 47 per cent of Aboriginal respondents had been separated from both parents in childhood, had to be treated with caution, because separation included "hospitalisation and juvenile detention in addition to removal" (page 37).  This might seem to suggest that juvenile detention resulting from criminal offence was not regarded as "forcible removal" by the Inquiry.  However, elsewhere, in the context of discussing contemporary separations, the report makes it quite clear that it regarded removals resulting from the juvenile justice system as coming within its purview (page 425 & Chapter 24).  Indeed, it would seem most unlikely that the Inquiry could have automatically excluded such cases from its consideration without specifically noting the fact and explaining the reasons, particularly as they were included in the 43 cases of family separation identified by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.  This is a figure which the report cites on two occasions (pages 317, 556).  One of these citations is made in the context of stating that

There is clearly a direct association between removal and the likelihood of criminalisation and further instances of removal.  The compounding effects of separation and criminalisation were shown dramatically in the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody investigations (page 556).

In other words, the report is willing to suggest that removal may have led to delinquent behaviour, but seems most reluctant to consider that it was a child's initial behaviour that might have led to removal.

FAILURE TO PROVIDE NECESSARY SUMMARY DATA RELATING TO WITNESSES

These considerations lead to a broader question relating to the presentation of the evidence witnesses gave to the Inquiry.  According to the report, the Inquiry took written or oral evidence from 535 indigenous people concerning their experiences of the removal policies (page 21).  These presumably included a substantial number of people who were not themselves taken, as totals in summary tables are only around 370. ⁽²⁸⁾  However, the report presents extracts from the confidential evidence or submissions of only 143 people; ⁽²⁹⁾ extracts from 55 of these people have been presented more than once, and in two cases, five times.  But there has been very little attempt to provide summary information for the witnesses as a whole.  Indeed only three matters are the subject of summary tables:  the types of placements witnesses experienced (pages 153, 187), age at removal (page 182), and sexual assaults reported (page 162).  Consequently it seems fair to state that the experiences of the majority of witnesses have been largely ignored.

It would be reasonable to expect summary information about the witnesses relating to such matters as the official reasons for the original removal, whether the child was subsequently returned to the parents or other relatives, the extent to which contact with parents or relatives was maintained, and so on.  The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody investigations showed that in a great many -- though not all -- cases it was possible to obtain information about the reasons for removal from official files or other sources.  It also indicated that in a significant number of cases removal was not permanent and that contact with family members was maintained.  The Bringing Them Home report makes damning generalisations about these issues, ⁽³⁰⁾ and offers a few heart-rending statements from witnesses, but it does not present any numerical summary data.

It is also reasonable to ask for demographic summaries relating to educational qualifications and other characteristics of witnesses.  These would assist in assessing both the fairness of statements such as "witnesses to the Inquiry removed to missions and institutions told of receiving little or no education, and certainly little of any value" (page 170), and the extent to which the witnesses were representative of all Aborigines who were removed from their families.  The later assessment could have been based on a comparison with demographic information obtained from the 1994 ABS survey of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, some of which has actually been presented in the report, although with a quite different purpose in mind (pages 14-15).

Omissions of the kind that I have discussed above do not provide any basis for thinking that the cases and circumstances that have been selected for discussion in the report have been chosen in a fair and dispassionate manner.

THE UNSATISFACTORY COMPARISON BETWEEN
ABORIGINAL AND NON-ABORIGINAL EXPERIENCES

The HREOC's Internet site addresses the issue of the difference between the removal of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children from poor families or single mothers.  In more uncompromising terms than in the report itself, it claims that the removal of indigenous children was unique.  "Non-Indigenous children may have been removed because their families failed to meet the standards and values of middle-class welfare workers.  Aboriginal children were removed because of their Aboriginality" (emphasis in original;  cf. pages 10-11).  However, the report does invoke middle class standards and values to explain the removals of Aboriginal children (page 266), although again there is the kind of inconsistency which creates a "damned if you do/damned if you don't" situation.  Thus, "no fixed abode" and "sleeps in the open air" are disparaged as a means of indicating neglect because they "appear overwhelmingly to target Indigenous lifestyles" (page 267), while later the report appears to accept statements in a submission from the Aboriginal Legal Service of WA, that "without housing, an individual's education, economic and socio-cultural developments are severely curtailed" (page 549).

The existence in various jurisdictions of special legislation which diminished the rights of Aborigines and made it easier to remove Aboriginal children was clearly racially discriminatory, and cannot be defended.  But insofar as the report makes claims about the differences in the treatment and experiences between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children, these need to be established with the appropriate evidence.  However, the report makes no attempt to compare like with like, for the material relating to non-Aboriginal children comes not from actual experiences, but largely from inferences, unsupported opinions and questionable generalisations (see, for example, pages 29, 33, 34, 44, 109, 169, 251-252, 260, 262-264).  While the Inquiry's terms of reference only covered Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, it would still have been possible to present a more balanced and comprehensive consideration of the circumstances relating to non-Indigenous children.

The most striking example of an inappropriate comparison with seemingly partisan intent is the reference that is made to an 1874 inquiry by the NSW Public Charities Commission which found that institutionalisation was damaging to the welfare of children.  This is cited three times, with the claim that "non-indigenous children soon benefited from this new awareness.  Indigenous children did not." (page 169;  other citations on pages 44, 262).  This would seem to fly in the face of the continued existence of homes for non-Aboriginal children up until recent decades, including in NSW, which the report itself acknowledges (for example, pages 31, 48, 79).

The release of the Bringing Them Home report triggered a number of reminders about the experiences of non-Aboriginal victims of state or church-instigated family disruption, although the fact of social welfare interference in the lives of children from poor and supposedly dysfunctional non-Aboriginal families is hardly a secret.  Allegations about the "duress" and "undue influence" that was placed on unmarried mothers to relinquish their babies for adoption, including acceptance of "consent" given while under heavy medication, are also receiving widespread publicity". ⁽³¹⁾  Whatever the legislation may have required, many non-Aboriginal children who became wards of the state also had appalling experiences. ⁽³²⁾  From the late nineteenth century until the mid-1960s thousands of British children were sent to Australia and Canada under schemes promoted by Dr Barnardo's Homes and other organisations and many of these children had families who had not consented to their migration.  As late as the 1950s, authorities believed that the ties between these children and their families should be discouraged because the rationale for removal was that they had been "deprived of a normal home life in the first place". ⁽³³⁾

The Inquiry could have requested that its terms of reference be amended so that non-Aboriginal victims of such child-removal policies could give evidence (although this would almost certainly have made the claim that the removal of Aboriginal children constituted "genocide" even more difficult to sustain).  It could also have carried out a far more rigorous and comprehensive examination of documentary sources -- both primary material, such as court records, and secondary analyses -- to assess how different the pressures and constraints on poor and powerless non-Indigenous families and the experiences of their removed children really were.

THE CHARGE OF "GENOCIDE"

ASSIMILATION AND THE UN CONVENTION ON GENOCIDE

The most egregious aspect of the Inquiry is its "finding" that the forcible removal policy constituted "genocide" and "a crime against humanity" (pages 270-275).  The way in which the report handles this matter is symptomatic of its more general approach, and justifies regarding it as an unworthy and irresponsible document.

The report's argument about genocide depends on article IIe of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which defines genocide as including "forcibly transferring children of [a national, ethnical, racial or religious] group to another group".  (On the initiative of the Soviet Union, the Convention does not cover social or political groups, thus excluding Pol Pot's extermination of up to two million Cambodians, and the millions of "class enemies" liquidated by Stalin.) ⁽³⁴⁾  The report notes that as a result "Genocide can be committed by means other than actual physical extermination.  It is committed by the forcible transfer of children, provided the other elements of the crime are established" (page 271). ⁽³⁵⁾  The authors of the report clearly see the "other elements" as being the assimilation policy, as it was this policy which was supposedly intended to destroy the "group":

the predominant aim of Indigenous child removals was the absorption or assimilation of the children into the wider, non-Indigenous, community so that their unique cultural values and ethnic identities would disappear, giving way to models of Western culture.  In other words, the objective was "the disintegration of the political and social institutions of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economical existence of" Indigenous peoples (Lemkin 1944, page 79). ⁽³⁶⁾  Removal of children with this objective in mind is genocidal because it aims to destroy the "cultural unit" which the Convention is concerned to preserve.

In other words, the objective of assimilation is quite central to the "genocide" argument of the report.  Indeed, Mick Dodson, one of the two Commissioners with primary responsibility for the Inquiry, was specifically quoted as stating that "assimilation is genocide" at a time when the Inquiry was still in progress. ⁽³⁷⁾  This gives rise to a number of very important issues that need to be discussed, some of which have implications well beyond the immediate issue of genocide.

ASSIMILATION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE SUPPORTED BY INTERNATIONAL BODIES IN POST-WAR PERIOD AND THE MAJOR PROPONENT OF GENOCIDE CONVENTION

It must be recognised that assimilation policies directed at indigenous or tribal people were strongly promoted by international bodies at least until the 1960s.  A recent study of the way in which indigenous people were represented in the international legal literature and by international organisations from 1945 notes that "the self-confident and enthusiastic project of the International Labour Organisation ('ILO') in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, [was] ... to develop and assimilate indigenous people into modern society".  This assimilation was seen as "desirable and just". ⁽³⁸⁾  The ILO and others who focused on indigenous questions saw the backwardness and ignorance of indigenous people as threatening their health, and even their survival, and as leaving them open to exploitation. ⁽³⁹⁾  The ILO's concern with the assimilation of indigenous people culminated in ILO Convention 107 of 1957, on The Protection and Integration of Indigenous and Other Tribal and Semi-Tribal Populations in Independent Countries.  While article 2.2.c of this convention asked governments to create "possibilities of national integration to the exclusion of measures tending towards the artificial assimilation of these populations", and 2.4 excluded the use of "force or coercion", any suggestion that policies whose prime intent was the assimilation of indigenous people were genocide would have been ridiculed.  It was countries with anti-assimilationist policies, such as South Africa, that were regarded as reprehensible.

Indeed, it seems reasonable to think that complaints such as those in the report that larger numbers of Indigenous children were removed from their families in the 1950s and 1960s in order, amongst other reasons, "to attend school in distant places, to receive medical treatment" (page 34) would have been seen as unhinged.  Even now one can ask, are the report's authors really trying to suggest that Aboriginal children should not have received medical treatment -- or education -- if this required them to be sent to metropolitan or regional centres?

It should also be noted that Raphael Lemkin, the Polish jurist who coined the term "genocide" and "the major proponent of the United Nations Convention" (page 271), specifically discussed the question of "cultural genocide", although a prohibition on this form was excluded from the final convention.  (Kuper states that the inclusion of the removal of children in the Genocide Convention is a relic of earlier formulations by UN committees on cultural genocide.) ⁽⁴⁰⁾  However,

Lemkin cautioned that the prohibition on cultural genocide was not directed against policies which attempted to assimilate a group into the larger society.  Instead, the provision sought to prohibit drastic methods, used to aid in the rapid and complete disappearance of the cultural, moral, and religious life of a group of human beings. ⁽⁴¹⁾

The report makes no mention of Lemkin's acceptance of assimilation, although the quotation comes from an article by Matthew Lippman that the authors used elsewhere in an attempt to support the genocide charge (pages 272, 274, 275).  Lemkin's other views on genocide play an important part in the report's argument (pages 271, 273, 275).  So if the authors were aware of Lemkin's position on assimilation, they could hardly ignore the question of the relation between the approaches he was trying to prohibit and the stated objectives of assimilation in Australia, with their reference to terms like "ultimate absorption" (page 32, from the 1937 Commonwealth-State Native Welfare Conference) and "in the course of time" (page 34, from the 1951 Native Welfare Conference).  Once again, the authors of the report appear to have stacked the cards.

MISREPRESENTATION OF POTENTIAL CONFLICTS BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP INTERESTS IN THE GENOCIDE CONVENTION

Rightly or wrongly, the international consensus was that the social and cultural conditions of indigenous people hindered their ability to achieve the rights and advantages enjoyed by others in the countries in which they were living.  In other words, there was believed to be a tension between the maintenance of indigenous cultures and facilitating the rights and even the individual existence of their members.  The report addresses this issue obliquely in a crucial section headed "Mixed motives are no excuse", but its treatment is so misleading that it verges on the dishonest.  It raises the question of whether the convention applies "where the destruction of a particular culture was believed to be in the best interests of the children belonging to that group or where the child removal policies were intended to serve multiple aims, for example, giving the children an education or job training as well as removing them from their culture" (page 273).  Its answer is that the convention does apply because

The debates at the time of the drafting of the Genocide Convention establish clearly that an act or policy is still genocide when it is motivated by a number of objectives.  To constitute an act of genocide the planned extermination of a group need not be solely motivated by animosity or hatred (page 274).

As its authority for this claim the report cites pages 22-23 of a paper on the convention by Matthew Lippman. ⁽⁴²⁾  However, while these pages certainly discuss the question of motives, and the debates that surrounded them, there is absolutely no suggestion that these covered circumstances where there might be a tension between the interests of an individual and the preservation of a group.  The debates dealt with circumstances where a group had been destroyed because that was the specific objective of the destroyers, as against circumstances where the group had been destroyed as a consequence of economic or political measures taken against it.  Indeed, it would have been most peculiar for the matter of any conflict between the interests of sections of the group and the group as a whole to have been covered in these debates because, at least as Lippman presents them, they focused on the killing of the group.

The only comments cited by the report that might be thought of as relevant to the question of mixed motives are those of the Venezuelan delegate who spoke in support of including the forcible transfer of children within the definition of genocide.  The delegate stated that "such transfer might be made from a group with a low standard of civilisation ... to a highly civilised group ... yet if the intent of the transfer were the destruction of the group, a crime of genocide would undoubtedly have been committed" (page 271). ⁽⁴³⁾  However, again there is no consideration of circumstances where there was a believed possible conflict of interest -- however ill-founded the belief -- between the children's welfare and the preservation of the group.

WIDESPREAD BELIEF AMONGST THOSE ONCE CONCERNED WITH ABORIGINAL WELFARE THAT "MIXED RACE" CHILDREN SHOULD BE REGARDED AS DIFFERENT TO "FULL BLOODS"

The report misleadingly asserts that "'mixed race' or 'half-caste' children were recognised as 'children of the group', that is as Indigenous children and not in any sense as children of no group or as children shared by different groups" (page 272).  In support it cites an Aboriginal Child Care Agency document which states

Since colonisation of this continent it is quite reasonable to assume that a child born our [sic] of mixed parentage have never been categorised, if one could say that, as "part-white" or "part-European".  Thus once it is known that a child has an Aboriginal parent, he or she is seen by the wider community as an Aborigine and will be subjected to racist and other negative attitudes experienced by Aborigines (page 272).

But the assumption is not correct.  Writing about the late 1930s, Paul Hasluck noted that

Among those reformers who were advocating more generous policies on native affairs [i.e. those who were promoting "assimilation" policies], the special claims of mixed race persons were pressed by saying they were just as much European as Aboriginal.  Instead of saying they were "part-Aboriginal" we should recognise them as "part-European". ⁽⁴⁴⁾

In fact, from the 1920s there were widely varying views about how "half-castes" should be regarded.  There was a vocal body of opinion, deeply concerned with Aboriginal welfare, which insisted on the need to make clear legislative and administrative distinctions between "full-bloods" and "mixed-bloods".  As Russell McGregor notes, support for this view came from across the political spectrum, from the Communist trade union official Tom Wright, whose 1939 pamphlet New Deal for Aborigines was endorsed by the NSW Labor Council, to the National Missionary Council.  McGregor observes, "as vehemently as Wright condemned the missionaries, on this issue at least, he and they saw eye to eye". ⁽⁴⁵⁾  In 1946, in a booklet published by the National Council for Civil Liberties of Great Britain, Geoffrey Parsons drew on a wide range of critical Australian sources, to present a damning indictment of past and contemporary policies.  As for the future, Parsons argued, echoing Wright,

there are two distinct problems.  First and most urgent is the problem of the full-blooded Aborigine.  There are thousands of them still living in tribal or semi-tribal conditions, but their number grows less each year, and unless the Australian Government can be induced to change its policy and to adopt the appropriate measures it will be too late to save them, for the remaining tribes will already have been forced to start out along the well-trodden road that leads from disruption to demoralisation and final extinction. ⁽⁴⁶⁾

The "second problem" was the "mixed blood" Aborigines.  While believing that ultimately the two problems were the same, in that the objective for both categories had to be for their inclusion in the Australian community as equal citizens, Parsons stated that the immediate problems were different because in broad terms

the appearance of children of mixed blood signalises that the disintegration of tribal life through contact with white civilisation has already begun, and that the opportunity of enabling the community, as a community [his emphasis], to remain intact and escape the stage of demoralisation no longer exists. ⁽⁴⁷⁾

He argued for the establishment of "inviolable reserves" for the full-bloods and full civil rights for all people of mixed race.  The "first essential step" was to ensure "that the words 'Aborigine' and 'Native' shall apply only to full-blooded Aborigines" in legislation.  In other words there was a vocal and influential body of opinion that was warning Australian governments that they would be complicit in "genocide" -- although the term itself was not used -- unless they differentiated between "full-bloods" and "mixed bloods".

REJECTION OF "MIXED RACE" CHILDREN BY SOME ABORIGINAL GROUPS

Bringing Them Home also claims "Aboriginal society regards any child of Aboriginal descent as Aboriginal" (page 272).  While this may be generally true today, it has not always been true.  In the early days of European contact in parts of southern Australia, there is evidence, coming from Aboriginal people themselves, that children of white fathers were not allowed to live. ⁽⁴⁸⁾  The anthropologist Professor Annette Hamilton, who carried out research in the Arnhem Land settlement of Maningrida in the 1960s wrote,

Part-European babies were not reared in the past.  Today there is only one such baby at Manangrida [sic], a one-year-old born to an Anbara girl ... Mixed-unions are frowned on by men and women alike as a matter of principle, although there is no apparent discrimination or hostility to either the infant or his/her mother.  Apart from these uses of infanticide, I have no evidence at all that infanticide was practised as a conscious mean of population control ... ⁽⁴⁹⁾

On the Sunday programme, Marg Harris, a woman born around 1930 of an Arunta mother and white father, told how her full brother was killed at birth by her mother, and how she was rescued from the same fate by her grandmother. She said that she "was not one of [her mother's] people", and that they told her "she shouldn't be amongst them". ⁽⁵⁰⁾  Colin McLeod, writing of his experiences in the Northern Territory in the 1950s, notes that "people of full Aboriginal descent rarely considered themselves as one with those of part Aboriginal background, and the reverse was also the case". He also refers to the physical cruelty that part-Aboriginal children sometimes experienced at the hands of "full-bloods", simply because they were "yella fellas". ⁽⁵¹⁾  As late as 1969, Nandjiwara Amagula, an Aborigine from Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory, made comments to an adult education summer school in Perth which suggest considerable ambivalence about the identity of "mixed-blood" Aboriginal children. He said that "the people of Groote Eylandt are not very happy to have their daughters playing around with white people. We want to build up our own nation with our own colour." ⁽⁵²⁾

Certainly, there was a widespread notion amongst Europeans in the inter-war period and beyond, that "half-castes" were rejected by "full-bloods" as not being proper Aborigines, ⁽⁵³⁾ although anthropological research in a number of regions in the 1930s by people such as A.P. Elkin and Caroline Kelly showed that this was not necessarily true. ⁽⁵⁴⁾  Nevertheless, however mistaken such views were, they cannot be ignored in any assessment of whether the removal of "mixed-blood" children was really designed to undermine Aboriginal "cultural units".

ABORIGINAL REJECTION OF ABORIGINAL CULTURE UNTIL THE 1960s

Even in the 1960s, anthropologists and others who could legitimately claim expert knowledge were stating that it was wrong to think of many -- though not all -- Aboriginal communities as having a culture that was significantly different from that of the surrounding white community.  The report disparages comments from James Bell as representing the idea "that there was nothing of value in Indigenous culture" (page 32).  But Bell, an anthropologist who had spent a number of years carrying out research amongst urban Aborigines in NSW (though this is not indicated in the report), had simply stated that culturally, there was very little difference between many "part-Aborigines" in NSW and economically depressed poor whites. ⁽⁵⁵⁾

Bell's observations were consistent with those of a number of other anthropologists who worked in settled Australia during the 1940s to early 1960s.  Jeremy Beckett wrote of the lack of interest Aborigines in western NSW had in learning about Aboriginal culture from one of the last initiated men in the area, and spoke of the irony of "an Aboriginal turning to white people [like Beckett himself] to preserve the culture which his own people were rejecting". ⁽⁵⁶⁾  And although the report states that Diane Barwick "described a distinct culture and sense of community that existed among Indigenous people living in Melbourne" in the years after the 1954 Child Welfare Act (page 61), Barwick's observations -- made during anthropological research in the early 1960s -- were not so much at variance with those of Bell.  She certainly referred to a strong sense of Aboriginal identification, and a contempt for those who tried to pass as whites.  But she also noted the similarity between the Victorian Aboriginal population and non-Aboriginal migratory workers, and that "knowledge of aboriginal languages and customs has almost disappeared. ⁽⁵⁷⁾  And in 1969, George Harwood, an Aboriginal public servant with the Department of Native Welfare of Western Australia, noted that there was a very large and growing number of Aborigines who "are no more Aboriginal in the cultural meaning of the term than any white Australia born in Australia". ⁽⁵⁸⁾

The accuracy of these observations need not concern us here, although they were made by people with a strong professional and personal commitment to the interests of Aborigines.  What is important is that they need to be taken into consideration as part of the intellectual climate within which assimilation policies were being carried out, and to be weighed against claims that officials were trying to "destroy the 'cultural unit' which the [Genocide] Convention is concerned to preserve" (page 273).

OMISSION OF EVIDENCE ABOUT STRONG ABORIGINAL SUPPORT FOR ASSIMILATION

In discussing the question of assimilation or absorption the report has also omitted a crucial piece of information.  As will be seen, unlike some of the other points discussed above, this can hardly be excused by a claim that the report's authors did not know of the information.

At the time when the assimilation policy was first being formulated, in the late 1930s, "one common strand in the views of all Aboriginal spokespersons in the south [was] the desire for incorporation into white society". ⁽⁵⁹⁾  This statement is taken from Andrew Markus's book, Governing Savages, which the report referred to sixteen times as a source of information and quotations (for example, pages 31, 45, 135, 137, 264).  Indeed the passionate statement of William Ferguson and Jack Patten in their 1938 manifesto Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights accusing Australians of wishing to exterminate Aborigines, which is quoted on page 46 of the report, is not taken from the original, but from the quotation included in Markus's book.  Seven sentences below this quotation Markus notes what Ferguson and Patten were actually urging, and goes on to include a further quotation from their manifesto:

The hope for the future lay in the absorption of Aborigines -- in both the cultural and biological senses -- into the white world:

We have no desire to go back to primitive conditions of the Stone Age.  We ask you to teach our people to live in the Modern Age, as modern citizens ... We ask for equal education, equal opportunity, equal wages, equal rights to possess property, or to be our own masters -- in two words:  equal citizenship! ... The mixture of Aboriginal and white races are practicable ... Aborigines can be absorbed into the white race within three generations, without any fear of a "throw-back". ⁽⁶⁰⁾

Subsequently Ferguson was to repeat the call for racial amalgamation.  Thus he told a Minister for the Interior in 1940 that "we consider the gradual absorption of the aborigines into the white race to be the most practical and natural course for our people. ⁽⁶¹⁾

In other words, the source of Ferguson and Patten's bitterness was the unwillingness of white Australians to assimilate Aborigines, the fact that they had -- in the words of another historian who has commented on the political demands of the two men -- "selfishly attempted to exclude Aborigines from the benefits of [European] civilisation". ⁽⁶²⁾  Certainly, however, they were also strongly opposed to the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families, which they saw, with full justification, as a denial of their legitimate rights. ⁽⁶³⁾

It is virtually impossible to believe that the authors of the report could have taken the extermination quote from Markus's book and not see the additional information he provided.  Yet no hint of such information has been provided anywhere in Bringing Them Home, even if only to argue against its significance, perhaps by suggesting that Ferguson and Patten's sentiments might not have been representative. ⁽⁶⁴⁾  Of course, an acknowledgement that major -- and radical -- Aboriginal leaders were publicly arguing for absorption at around the same time that assimilation policies were being officially formulated would put a rather different perspective on many of the claims and arguments in the report, including that of "genocide".  In fact, if the historian Heather Goodall is to be believed, the first Aboriginal criticisms of "the cultural destruction sought by the 'Assimilation Policy'", at least in NSW, did not come until 1958, "when Bert Groves reasserted, for the first time since 1927, the cultural distinctiveness and values of Aboriginal societies". ⁽⁶⁵⁾  So it would seem that the authors simply chose to omit such potentially damaging information, despite its importance for a proper understanding of the historical context in which the assimilation policies were introduced.  But by such an omission, the credibility of the report is gravely compromised.

The one attempt to deal with the problem Ferguson and Patten present by a commentator who endorses Bringing Them Home is Robert Manne's recent essay "The stolen generations". ⁽⁶⁶⁾  (However, Manne makes no reference to the fact that the report omits the relevant evidence, although I had brought this to his attention well before the essay was first presented.) ⁽⁶⁷⁾  He writes

This terrible thought [that the elimination of "half-castes" was desirable] ... was even shared, as Ron Brunton has argued, by two Aboriginal activists of mixed descent.  That these two people thought the solution to the problem they posed was to breed out their own Aboriginal blood bears some resemblance to one of the most abject Jewish responses to European anti-Semitism -- Jewish self-hatred. ⁽⁶⁸⁾

As Christopher Pearson has pointed out, this attempt to present the unnamed Ferguson and Patten as somehow pathological is a caricature. ⁽⁶⁹⁾  The Jews who reacted to anti-Semitism by abjectly blaming themselves for their plight would never have produced a pamphlet like Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights, with its stirring denunciations of their oppressors.  Nor would they have taken any part in organising an event like the "Day of Mourning" to coincide with the sesquicentenary of European settlement on Australia Day in 1938, the event Ferguson and Patten's pamphlet was designed to publicise.  In his book, Imagined Destinies, which Manne cites as one of the four that "greatly assisted" him in preparing his essay, Russell McGregor specifically discusses the question of whether Ferguson and Patten were "dupes of a dominant ideology" -- or whether they simply using rhetoric to disguise another agenda.  McGregor concludes that their statements need to be taken as the genuine beliefs of men who were trying to challenge dominant white perceptions.  Jewish victims of self-hatred internalised the perceptions of others;  they did not challenge them.

CAN YOU JUST SAY YOU ARE SORRY FOR GENOCIDE?

Another telling indication of the intellectual and moral irresponsibility of Bringing Them Home comes from internal evidence.  Recommendation 10 states:  "that the Commonwealth legislate to implement the Genocide Convention with full domestic effect" (page 295).  Articles III and IV of this convention specifically state that persons who have committed genocide, conspired to commit genocide, directly and publicly incited others to commit genocide, attempted genocide, or who have complicity in genocide "shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals". ⁽⁷⁰⁾  However, nowhere in the report is there any suggestion that those involved in the supposed genocide of child removal should be brought to trial.  Obviously, it did not even occur to the authors to include a discussion of why criminal proceedings might not be desirable.

Raimond Gaita, one of the commentators who accepts the reasonableness of the genocide charge, states that there are overwhelming reasons why those responsible for the child removals should not be brought to justice, and that the prospect of any such proceedings would trigger a vicious backlash against Aborigines.  This forecast is by no means as obvious as he pretends, for it is reasonable to believe that, faced with indisputable evidence that people who had committed crimes against humanity were at large, any nation possessing a sense of decency and justice would accept the need to bring the guilty to account.  The implication of Gaita's forecast seems to be that Australians fall well short of the moral probity that he seeks to exemplify.  Or perhaps his statement can be read as a subconscious admission that the genocide charge is deeply mischievous, despite his own attempts to establish "that Australians are now obliged to examine their consciences for reasons similar to those which obliged the Germans to do so after the war".  Gaita does suggest that "neither the left nor the right take seriously the report's accusation".  He thinks that as far as the left is concerned, many of its members "have for so long spoken frivolously of genocide that they have become inoculated against its serious meaning".  Like others who must be aware of the many serious defects of Bringing Them Home, Gaita seems most reluctant to criticise the report, and he avoids accusing the authors of the report of frivolity.  But by Gaita's own criterion that "fully understanding the seriousness of genocide [requires] that one find it at least thinkable that those who are accused of it should be brought to trial", they too have not taken their own accusation seriously. ⁽⁷¹⁾  An additional reason for thinking that the authors of Bringing Them Home were being frivolous in their charge of genocide is provided by the remarkable statement Sir Ronald Wilson is reported to have made, "if that word ["genocide"] offends you, don't use it". ⁽⁷²⁾

WHY HAS IT TAKEN SO LONG FOR THE CHARGE OF GENOCIDE TO BE MADE?

Although there have always been people who knew what was involved in the child removal policies and who criticised them, the claim of "genocide" has only been made in recent years.  The report itself notes that strong criticisms of child removal policies go back to the last century (see, for example, pages 71, 123, 140);  and the HREOC Internet site even has a special section titled "Who spoke out at the time?" which includes some of these criticisms.  The report also acknowledges that its genocide finding differs from that of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, but claims that its own research has been much wider, enabling it to conclude that a principal aim of child removal policies, "was to eliminate Indigenous cultures as distinct entities" (page 273).  (There is some misrepresentation involved here as the convention refers to "a national, ethnical, racial or religious group", not "culture".)

Professor Colin Tatz, from the Centre for Comparative Genocide Studies, is quoted as a source for the practices of the Victorian Aborigines Welfare Board, to which he belonged in the mid-1960s (pages 7, 65).  His comments that Aboriginal children were removed because they were Aboriginal, rather than being individuals who might need care, are also cited as a basis for the genocide finding (page 273).  Subsequently, Tatz has publicly supported the genocide charge, writing almost gleefully that "Australia is on the sharp hook this time". ⁽⁷³⁾  But Tatz, who has been writing on Aboriginal issues, including child removal, since the early 1960s, seems to have given no indication then that child removals constituted "genocide", even though some of these writings specifically addressed the question of international concerns and the possibility of bringing international pressure to bear on Australia. ⁽⁷⁴⁾  Given his academic history and interests, he can hardly claim ignorance of the Convention.

In 1965, the Victorian Section of Amnesty International prepared a report on Aborigines, at the request of the international body following an appeal by the Federal Council for Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.  Amongst other matters, it referred to the powers authorities still had over Aboriginal children in some jurisdictions, and found that the conditions under which Aborigines lived contravened international conventions.  But again, there was no reference to genocide. ⁽⁷⁵⁾  The Bringing Them Home report refers to the widespread publicity given to statements in October 1951 by Dr Charles Duguid, President of the Aborigines Advancement League, that "the practice of taking babies from their mothers [was] 'cruel' and 'the most hated task of every patrol officer'" (page 142).  Some years earlier, Dr Duguid had threatened to embarrass Australia overseas over a plan to grant grazing licences in Pintubi country. ⁽⁷⁶⁾  Once more one can ask, given his recognition of the wrongs of child removal, why didn't he refer to the Convention, which Australia had ratified two years earlier, and which came into force in 1951 (page 270)?

Had these people been willing to invoke the Convention when they became aware of what was going on, the acute embarrassment that Australia would have suffered had the Convention really been contravened almost certainly would have brought an immediate end to these supposedly genocidal practices.  So the questions inescapably arise, are people like Colin Tatz "on the sharp hook" and complicit in genocide by their silence?  Why has it taken so long to make the charge?

TREATING CULTURE LIKE PRE-WAR
AUSTRALIANS TREATED RACE

The language of race, the categorisation of people according to the proportion of their European or Aboriginal ancestry and the assessment of their character and determination of their life-chances according to these proportions, pervaded discussions of Aboriginal matters in the inter-war period and for some time beyond.  Whether the discussions were those of the Commonwealth and State officials at the 1937 Conference, ⁽⁷⁷⁾ the critics of government policy such as Wright and Parsons, or even Ferguson and Patten's assurances -- based on statements from Professor Archie Watson of Adelaide University ⁽⁷⁸⁾ -- about the low risk of "throwbacks", they were based on assumptions about "race" which are rightly repellent to a great many contemporary Australians.  These assumptions are not only scientifically groundless, their "rejection of the person;  the assimilation of the individual to the collective;  the assignment of praise or blame, reward or punishment, respect or contempt on the basis of some real or alleged, or imagined tendency of the collective as a collective" ⁽⁷⁹⁾ repudiates the liberal values most Australians hold -- and supposedly held in the past.

But the report is unfortunately not immune from biologically-based and collectivist thinking itself.  This is most apparent in the discussion about the need to involve Indigenous agencies in the adoption of Indigenous children, and the supposed problems that arise if the relinquishing parent "does not identify as Indigenous herself or himself or does not identify the baby as such or where a non-Indigenous relinquishing parent does not notify the department that the child's other parent is Aboriginal or a Torres Strait Islander" (page 472).  The report suggests that legislation could require the adoption agency to establish "the cultural heritage of every child surrendered for adoption.  This positive duty would authorise the department or agency to breach the mother's confidentiality to the extent needed to trace her own and the father's background" (page 473).  This expresses a notion that culture is a matter of biological transmission and is little different from the thinking that any child with a white parent should not be brought up by Aborigines.  It can just as easily lead to sacrificing the best interests of the child to the presumed interests of a collective (cf. pages 431, 476), as the case of Melita Kepple, a two-year-old Aboriginal girl from north Queensland demonstrates.  When Melita's mother died, she was eventually fostered with a white couple, with the approval of her father and other relatives.  But after eighteen months, the Family Services Department forcibly removed her, placing her with an Aboriginal woman who is alleged to have a history of alcohol problems and violence, on the grounds that she should be brought up in her community. ⁽⁸⁰⁾

POTENTIAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

SIR RONALD WILSON'S PREVIOUS INVOLVEMENT WITH A "GENOCIDAL INSTITUTION"

In the mid-1960s, as a consequence of his position as Moderator of Assembly in the Presbyterian Church of Western Australia, Sir Ronald Wilson was on the board of Sister Kate's home for Aboriginal children.  During the course of the Inquiry, he apologised for the role that he thereby played in the removal of Aboriginal children from their families and communities.  He has also been quoted as stating "I had no knowledge of the wrongness of the practice", ⁽⁸¹⁾ a remarkable admission given that he now claims that the practice constituted "genocide", which is generally seen as the ultimate crime against humanity.

This self-confessed previous inability to make a proper moral assessment might have led other individuals to think twice about their involvement in such an inquiry, although Sir Ronald may well be able to completely detach himself from activities in his past for which he now feels guilt or sorrow.  But he could not be unmindful of the danger of providing even the slightest grounds for public suspicion that his judgement might be affected by a desire to atone for this past;  or alternatively, that recommendations about actions that might be taken against those with any degree of responsibility for the removals could be influenced by his own situation.  His involvement, no matter how limited, with an organisation which he must now classify as "genocidal", should have precluded him from any official participation in the Inquiry.

SHOULD SOMEONE WITH CLOSE LINKS TO THE UNITING CHURCH MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS WHICH COULD IMPACT ON THE FINANCIAL INTERESTS OF CHURCHES?

Sir Ronald's long history as an office holder with the Presbyterian Church -- and its successor, the Uniting Church -- creates a second basis for public perceptions of a potentially serious conflict of interest. ⁽⁸²⁾  One of the terms of reference of the Inquiry was to "examine the principles relevant to determining the justification for compensation for persons or communities affected by [the] separations".  (Although this was a later addition to the original terms of reference.) ⁽⁸³⁾  Given the extent to which religious institutions were involved in the removal of children, any recommendations the Inquiry made under this reference could clearly have a significant impact on the churches.

In some places the report's statements suggest that the churches generally did no more than implement government policy;  for example, "the churches share some responsibility for forcible removals because of their involvement in providing accommodation, education, training and work placements for the children." (my emphasis, page 405;  see also page 309).  But material presented in other sections indicates that many missions went well beyond a simple compliance with government policies, and that they were enthusiastic advocates of programmes and activities whose consequences clearly come within the heads of damage under which the Inquiry recommends that monetary compensation should be paid (Recommendation 14;  for examples see pages 75, 104, 119, 127, 141).  Furthermore, in a number of cases, mission staff appear to have perpetrated acts which were totally at variance with government policies, involving serious physical and sexual abuse (pages 148-49, 161, 163, 194).

It is also worth noting that in Shades of Darkness, Paul Hasluck recorded his belief that the policy of transferring "quadroon" and "octoroon" children out of the Northern Territory "into southern denominational institutions with a view to their ultimate adoption by whites" in the early 1930s "originated with the Christian missions".  He added that, when he became Minister for Territories, opinion in the Northern Territory administration was still divided about this policy, "but in southern church circles and among those who were sympathetically concerned with the plight of Aborigines there was a strong continuing advocacy of giving children 'a chance in life'". ⁽⁸⁴⁾  A similar point is made by Colin McLeod, speaking of the 1950s:

it was the churches -- not the Welfare Branch -- that engaged in social engineering by removing Aboriginal children from their families for ideological -- rather than pragmatic -- reasons ... They would often send children down south to keep them away from their own culture. ⁽⁸⁵⁾

Indeed, policies regarding the separation of children from their families differed between denominations, and between missions of particular denominations.  A study of Aboriginal education published by the Australian Council for Educational Research in 1948 recorded that at the Anglican Forrest River Mission in Western Australia, for instance, girls were taken from their parents at the age of eleven and housed in dormitories which they could only leave under strict supervision.  Boys were taken to the dormitories when they were nine, but they were not locked in at night and were allowed to visit their families every evening.  The study also found that every Catholic mission had its own boarding school, and this was "regarded as very important since it removes children from their 'pagan' atmosphere".  At the Presbyterian Ernabella mission, however, the study noted the deliberate attempt to ensure that traditional culture would not be undermined, and quoted the school teacher as stating "no family tie has been broken, no superior complexes set up.  The child still finds his most satisfying impression and expression in the nightly corroboree;  he still seeks most the family circle and the society of his kind". ⁽⁸⁶⁾

The record of missionary activity amongst Aborigines is clearly very mixed.  Some missionaries were champions of Aboriginal rights and dignity, often under very difficult circumstances.  Others were racist, tyrannical and callous.  Many were, at best, highly paternalistic. ⁽⁸⁷⁾  But similar comments could be made about government officials responsible for implementing Aboriginal policies.  Nevertheless, the report seems to let the churches off rather lightly.  They are given a choice as to whether they wish to contribute to the National Compensation Fund to be established by the Council of Australian Governments to provide monetary benefits to those who were removed from their families (Recommendation 15, page 309).  The only requirement for material compensation that is placed on them is the return of land obtained for the specific purpose of accommodating removed children (Recommendation 41).

There may be good reasons for not insisting that the churches bear a larger share of the financial burden for the damage they are alleged to have caused.  But a report prepared under the primary responsibility of someone with such close official links to a major church cannot escape the suspicion that these reasons may not have been fully canvassed.

CONCLUSION

The strong criticisms I have made of a number of significant aspects of the Bringing Them Home report certainly do not cover all its faults, as my aim has been indicative rather than exhaustive.  In making these criticisms I do not wish to provide any grounds for Australians to dismiss the "stolen generations" issue, or the other shameful denials of human rights that Aborigines have suffered.  But if one takes seriously the distress that was inflicted on many Aboriginal children and families by discriminatory, callous and humiliating policies and practices of the past -- as I believe Australians must -- the only dignified response is an uncompromising commitment to presenting the truth.  It does not need to be heavily adorned or thoroughly sanitised.  Unfortunately, the authors of Bringing Them Home, together with the many historians and others who have read the report yet remain silent about the numerous flaws they must have recognised, obviously seem to think otherwise.

A candid, thorough and credible examination of the "stolen generations" issue would actually have been a constructive undertaking.  It would have helped other Australians to understand that in all kinds of ways Aborigines were once made to feel they were inferior human beings, and the destructive consequences that followed from such thinking and practices.  As well as meeting legitimate Aboriginal requests for a genuine acknowledgement of past wrongs, it could have encouraged all Australians to reflect on the risks of providing legislative authority to racial or ethnic differences.  It could also have encouraged an intelligent debate on the appropriate limits of state intervention into family life, particularly in the difficult circumstances where the welfare of children may reasonably be thought to be under serious threat.  Even the most critical observers of Australia's past would probably still concede that there were occasions when a refusal to separate an Aboriginal child from his or her family would have led to the child's serious injury or death, whether or not the removal was handled callously, or whatever degree of indifference the authorities later displayed towards the child's interests. ⁽⁸⁸⁾  Assisting authorities to achieve a wise and humane balance on this onerous issue could have been just one beneficial outcome of a sensible Inquiry.

The present situation in relation to the "stolen generations" is most unsatisfactory.  On the one hand, it is a matter of great importance, with the potential to corrode relations between Aborigines and non-Aborigines indefinitely.  The Inquiry has galvanised a great deal of pain and dismay from both Aborigines and non-Aborigines, and this will not simply dissipate.  But the widespread rejection of Canada's recent apology to its indigenous people over a similar issue, ⁽⁸⁹⁾ suggests that even if the Federal Government were to reverse its current stance and make a formal apology to the "stolen generations", any statement it could realistically make would not resolve the matter.  Unfortunately, many of the people who are most vocal in calling for an apology seem more concerned about a political struggle over legitimacy and power than they are about restoring a moral balance, or in alleviating the distress of those who suffered injustice.  As the black American commentator Thomas Sowell has noted, the leaders of such political struggles have little incentive to bring about a genuine reconciliation, as their position and influence usually depend on maintaining a climate of resentment.  "The point is 'to create the appropriate climate for bitter recriminations' ... [If] through miscalculation, a demand may be made that can be and is met ... what is conceded must then be denounced as paltry and insultingly inadequate, however important it may have been depicted as being when it seemed unattainable". ⁽⁹⁰⁾

But on the other hand, the Government and the public have been given an official report which is highly unprofessional and misleading.  By taking the report as it stands seriously, further impetus has been given to the culture of deceit that threatens Australians" understanding of certain Aboriginal issues, and which has been most blatantly manifested in the fraudulent claims about "women's business" on Hindmarsh Island. ⁽⁹¹⁾  (It is worth noting that at least three of the Commissioners for the present Inquiry have publicly supported those making these fraudulent claims.)

The report is also likely to hinder authorities from effecting an appropriate balance on the question of intervention in circumstances where Aboriginal children are being abused or neglected, and may therefore result in some otherwise preventable injuries or deaths.  And a great deal of damage of a different kind could result from the claim that Australia has committed "genocide" -- perhaps even as recently as a decade ago:  "The continuation into the 1970s and 1980s of the practice of preferring non-Indigenous foster and adoptive families for Indigenous children was also arguably genocidal" (page 274).  Already it has become part of the conventional wisdom of many academics, who are blithely speaking of "the cultural and biological genocidal policies of the stolen generation years". ⁽⁹²⁾  The Inquiry's use of the term "genocide" has even been endorsed as "accurate" by a former conservative Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser. ⁽⁹³⁾  These assessments will quickly find their way into the texts which are used to give young Australians their understanding of the past, and they are also likely to be thrown back in Australia's face when complaints are made about human rights abuses in other countries.

And given that Australia is now a country which has been found to have recently committed genocide by an official Inquiry, the question of what must be done with those who bear the burden of guilt cannot be ignored.  The present Government does not accept the finding -- although it could have done far more to explain to Parliament and the people why it has to be rejected -- but it has been accepted by a number of Federal members of the ALP. ⁽⁹⁴⁾  A party which sees itself as "keepers of the flame" for the "dignity of the Australian nation" ⁽⁹⁵⁾ could not allow people who it believes have committed genocide to go unpunished without utterly compromising that dignity.  It is therefore incumbent on Labor to explain what it intends to do, should it return to power, about prosecuting the people who were responsible for introducing and implementing the supposedly genocidal policies.  Alternatively, an infinitely better course of action would be to reject the report's genocide finding, and give serious consideration to whether a report which has been so irresponsible on this issue can be used as an appropriate guide to approaching other issues it discussed.

Perhaps the ideal way of solving the deplorable situation which the misrepresentations of Bringing Them Home has created would be a new Inquiry with expanded terms of reference to include the forced removal of non-Aboriginal children, and which would be conducted by people who would treat their task with the rigour, objectivity and probity it demands.  But such a solution is not a realistic option, for no government would be willing to take this course of action.  Perhaps the only appropriate alternative would be for the nation's leaders to be more forthright and courageous in delineating a morally and intellectually honourable approach to the "stolen generations" issue;  explaining that while the issue is very serious, both the victims and the nation have been let down by the Inquiry.

Unfortunately, this may also be an unrealisable hope.  The present Government has been trapped in a destructive polarity on Aboriginal issues.  It is right to reject the "black armband" history that has become so prevalent in recent years, not because it may undermine a not always justified sense of national pride, but because it is frequently unbalanced, careless with the truth, and politically tendentious.  It is also right to reject the separatist approach -- which is also evident in the report in such matters as the promotion of the Draft Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (pages 562-565). ⁽⁹⁶⁾  But it seems unable to present its objections in a way that would convince Australians who are genuinely committed to the vision of reconciliation -- "a united Australia which respects this land of ours;  values the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage;  and provides justice and equity for all" -- that there are moral alternatives to those presented by the "Aboriginal industry".  Too many members of the Howard Government seem to have lost confidence in the moral authority of their own supposed philosophical principles of liberalism, and seem to accept that they have no right to occupy the moral high ground.  They need to remember that Martin Luther King's stirring wish that his children would see a time when people "will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character" is a classic expression of the liberal ideal.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A number of friends and colleagues made very helpful comments on a draft version of this Backgrounder which I circulated in December 1997.  As a couple of these people expressed a desire not to be publicly identified I have decided not to name anyone, but I thank all of those who gave me written or oral comments.  However, responsibility for the final document rests solely with me.

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ENDNOTES

1.  National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, Bringing Them Home, Commonwealth of Australia, 1997.  References to this document are included in the text as page numbers.  All other references are in these endnotes.

2.  Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, National Report, volume 1, page 44.

3.  For example, Peter Howson, "Truth on 'stolen' children", Herald Sun, 9 October 1997;  Geoffrey Partington, Hasluck versus Coombs:  White Politics and Australia's Aborigines, Quakers Hill Press, Sydney, 1996, pages 30-31, 97.

4.  See, for example, Ronald Wilson & Michael Dodson, "There's no compensation for not seeing your mother", [Letter to the editor], Australian Financial Review, 1 April 1996;  Georgina Wilson & Kimina Lyall, "'Nothing to say' on stolen children", The Australian, 26 September 1996;  Graham Lloyd, "Lost dreams", Courier-Mail, 21 May 1997;  Kimina Lyall, Mike Steketee & Stuart Honeysett, "Howard muffed apology, says inquiry chief", The Australian, 27 May 1997.

5.  P.W. Beckenham, The Education of the Australian Aborigine, ACER, 1948, pages 4-11.

6.  See, for example, Heather Goodall, "New South Wales", in Ann McGrath, ed. Contested Ground:  Australian Aborigines under the British Crown, Allen & Unwin, 1995, pages 75, 96.

7.  Ruth Fink, "The contemporary situation of change among part-Aborigines in Western Australia", in R.M. & C.H. Berndt, eds. Aboriginal Man in Australia, Angus and Robertson, 1965, pages 428-429.

8.  Judith Brett, "Every morning as the sun came up:  the enduring pain of the 'stolen generation'", Times Literary Supplement, 3 October 1997, page 4.

9.  See, for example, Elizabeth F. Loftus, "Creating false memories", Scientific American, volume 227, number 3, September 1997, pages 50-55.

10.  Cf. the claim that "most witnesses refuted suggestions that they were neglected or abused by their parents, some making the contrast with their subsequent experiences in institutions or foster homes" (page 11).

11.  Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, D.J. O'Dea, Report of the Inquiry into the Death of Donald Chatunalgi, 1990.  In this, and most of the other cited Royal Commission Cases, I have worked from the Justice and Equity CD-ROM, AGPS, which does not include the pagination of the original reports.

12.  Quoted in House of Representatives Hansard, by Graeme Campbell in Grievance Debate, 2 June 1997, from The West Australian, 30 May 1997.  In this speech Campbell also provides an example of the later reinterpretation of the circumstances under which a child was removed, noting that Pat Dodson's eulogy to the late Robert Riley stated that Riley had been forcibly taken, although "his mother asked Sister Kate to take him because she was in a relationship with a man who could not stand Robert and whose bashings would probably have killed Robert".

13.  Some examples of these positive statements are:  "even though I had a good education with [adoptive family] and I went to college, there was just this feeling that I did not belong there" (No. 384, page 13);  "I've got everything that could be reasonably expected:  a good home environment, education, stuff like that, but that's all material stuff." (No. 136, page 13);  "My adopted parents are fantastic." (No. 667, page 64);  "...we only learnt from being brought up by missionaries.  They took some of that grief away in teaching us another way to overcome the grief and the hurt and the pain and the suffering.  So I'm very thankful from that point of view and I believe that nothing comes without a purpose." (No. 305, page 130);  "I guess I had quite a good relationship with my adoptive Mum, Dad and sisters." (No. 823, page 244).  In two of the cases, 155 (page 243) & 696 (page 202), the quoted material itself does not point to positive experiences, but the identifying comments state that the person was "happily adopted".

14.  The first and third of these cases involved children placed at Colebrook Children's Home in South Australia, the second, a child who was fostered, also in South Australia.

15.  A specific example of this kind of thinking is the following statement:  "Anna's story illustrates the inter-generational transfer of the effects of forcible removal.  Anna's Koori grandmother was forcibly removed from her family and her mother abandoned her when she was six years old." (page 205).  Are we really being asked to accept that a mother's abandonment of her own child can be reduced to these terms?

16.  See also the table "Administrative removal powers not subject to prior judicial scrutiny" (page 254).

17.  See, for example, Pat Jacobs, Mister Neville, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1990, for A.O. Neville's statements about the number of children removed to Moore River in the previous three years.

18.  I should note at this point that whereas it is possible to identify the majority of these individual cases, in some cases there is ambiguity, as it is not always clear whether the separation was voluntary or not.  I have assumed that the Royal Commission used the cut-off age of 16.  This is the age that the present Inquiry used in its table listing the age at removal of witnesses, (page 182).  Although the present report refers to the Royal Commission's findings (pages 317, 556), its very wide definition of "forced removal" -- as discussed earlier -- would seem to cover some cases that were not included in the Royal Commission's figure of 43.

19.  Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, National Report, volume 5, pages 33-34;  J.H. Wootten, Report of the Inquiry into the Death of Malcolm Charles Smith, page 77.

20.  Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, J.H. Wootten, Report of the Inquiry into the Death of Clarence Alec Nean, 1990.

21.  Ibid.

22.  Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, L.F. Wyvill, Report of the Inquiry into the Death of Barbara Denise Yarrie, 1990;  Report of the Inquiry into the Death of Fay Lena Yarrie, 1990.

23.  Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, L.F. Wyvill, Report of the Inquiry into the Death of Karen Lee O'Rourke, 1990.

24.  For example, Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, D.J. O'Dea, Report of the Inquiry into the Death of Christine Lesley Ann Jones, 1989;  D.J. O'Dea, Report of the Inquiry into the Death of Graham Trevor Walley, 1990;  L.F. Wyvill, Report of the Inquiry into the Death of Daniel Alfred Lacey, 1990;  L.F. Wyvill, Report of the Inquiry into the Death of Darren Steven Wouters, 1991.

25.  Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, D.J. O'Dea, Report of the Inquiry into the Death of an Aboriginal Man on 25 February 1983 at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, 1990.

26.  Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, J.H. Wootten, Report of the Inquiry into the Death of Shane Kenneth Atkinson, 1991.

27.  Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, D.J. O'Dea, Report of the Inquiry into the Death of Steven Glenn Michael, 1990.

28.  These tables suggest some carelessness on the part of the authors, as their numbers differ, even though two of them are supposedly exhaustive in giving the number for whom the relevant information was not recorded (pages 182, 187).  And the table on sexual assaults gives a much higher total, without making clear what I assume is the reason -- that it would be possible for an individual to record a response for more than one category (page 162).

29.  In calculating this figure I have assumed that the same number was retained for confidential evidence and confidential submissions.  In some cases this is obvious, from the descriptive remarks following the case number.  But in other cases similarly numbered cases are from people in different States or from a man in one instance and a woman in another.  I have assumed that this is a result of typographical or other errors.

30.  For example, "Contact with family members was at best limited and strictly controlled" (page 155).

31.  For example, Geoffrey Gray, "Letter to the Editor", The Australian, 22 May 1997;  Breck McCay, "Letter to the Editor", The Australian, 22 May 1997;  7.30 Report, ABC Television, 26 November 1997.

32.  See, for example, Meaghan Shaw, "Former wards to sue state over neglect, abuse", The Age, 19 November 1997.

33.  See, for example, Allen Moore, Growing Up with Barnardo's, Hale & Iremonger, 1990;  John Moss, Child Migration to Australia, London, Home Office, 1953;  Anonymous, "England's stolen generation may receive compensation", The Age, 2 August 1997.

34.  See, for example, Leo Kuper, Genocide:  Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century, Penguin, 1981, page 25;  Frank Chalk, "Definitions of genocide and their implications for prediction and prevention", Holocaust and Genocide Studies, volume 4, 1989, pages 150-151.

35.  It is worth noting that article IId of the convention covers "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group", and that in the United States this has been used to claim that birth control programmes directed at the black community are a form of genocide (Robert G. Weisbord, Genocide?  Birth Control and the Black American, Greenwood Press & The Two Continents Publishing Group, 1975).  This would suggest that in the future Australia may well be accused of genocide by inhabitants of countries which have been the recipients of funding for family planning programmes.

36.  The reference is to Raphael Lemkin's study, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944.  Clearly, the closure of the quotation mark before Indigenous indicates that he did not use this term -- which was not in wide use at the time.  I do not know what term Lemkin did use here.

37.  Rosemary Neill, "Dialogue of the deaf", The Weekend Australian, 29-30 June 1996.

38.  Chris Tennant, "Indigenous peoples, international institutions and the international legal literature from 1945-1993", Human Rights Quarterly, volume 16, 1994, pages 10, 12.

39.  Ibid., pages 14-15, 26.

40.  Leo Kuper, The Prevention of Genocide, Yale University Press, 1985, page 12.

41.  Matthew Lippman, "The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:  forty-five years later", Temple International and Comparative Law Journal, volume 8, number 1, 1994, page 37.

42.  Ibid.

43.  The ellipsis marks are in Bringing Them Home, and as I have not seen the original document I do not know whether the included section fairly represents the delegate's comments.  The comments are also quoted in Matthew Lippman, op. cit., page 35, with the same set of ellipsis marks.

44.  Paul Hasluck, Shades of Darkness, Melbourne University Press, 1988, page 69.

45.  Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies:  Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880-1939, Melbourne University Press, 1997, page 245;  see also pages 139-141, 244-248.

46.  Geoffrey Parsons, Black Chattels:  The Story of the Australian Aborigines, National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1946, page 41.

47.  Ibid.

48.  Theresa Clements, From Old Maloga:  (The Memoirs of an Aboriginal Woman), n.d., page 2.

49.  Annette Hamilton, Nature and Nurture:  Aboriginal Child-Rearing in North Central Arnhem Land, AIAS, Canberra, 1981, pages 25-26;  see also page 123.

50.  Channel 9, Sunday programme, 10 August 1997.

51.  Colin McLeod, Patrol in the Dreamtime, Mandarin, 1997, pages 236, 175-176.

52.  "The Northern Territory:  Aboriginal opinions", in D.E. Hutchinson, Aboriginal Progress:  A New Era?, University of Western Australia Press, 1969, page 136.

53.  See, for example, Tony Austin, I Can Picture the Old Home So Clearly, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1993, page 4;  Paul Hasluck, op. cit., page 69.

54.  Russell McGregor, op. cit., page 203.

55.  James H. Bell, "Assimilation in New South Wales", in Marie Reay (ed.), Aborigines Now, Angus and Robertson, 1964, pages 64, 67-68.

56.  Jeremy Beckett, "George Dutton's country:  portrait of an Aboriginal drover", Aboriginal History, volume 2, 1978, page 25.  See also, for example, Robert Tonkinson, "Foreword", in Ronald M. Berndt & Catherine H. Berndt, with John Stanton, A World That Was:  The Yaraldi of the Murray River and the Lakes, South Australia, Melbourne University Press, 1993, pages xxi-xxii.

57.  Diane Barwick, "The self-conscious people of Melbourne", in Marie Reay (ed.), Aborigines Now, Angus and Robertson, 1964, page 20.

58.  George Harwood, "Looking toward the future", in D.E. Hutchinson, op. cit., page 43.

59.  Andrew Markus, Governing Savages, Allen & Unwin, 1990, page 174.

60.  Markus himself does not take this quote from the original pamphlet, but from Jack Horner's book on William Ferguson.  Although the original pamphlet is rather hard to find, a substantial portion of it has been reprinted in Nigel Parbury, Survival:  A History of Aboriginal Life in New South Wales, Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs, NSW, 1986, pages 108-112.

61.  Andrew Markus, op. cit., page 179.

62.  Russell McGregor, "Protest and progress:  Aboriginal activism in the 1930s", Australian Historical Studies, volume 25, number 101, 1993, page 557.

63.  Nigel Parbury, op. cit., page 110.

64.  In a paper originally published in 1983, Peter Read stated "to what extent Aborigines wanted to follow the suggestion of such leaders of the 1930s as Ferguson and Patten of voluntary assimilation with the whites is not clear.  This important subject still awaits an in-depth study".  "'A rape of the soul so profound':  some reflections on the dispersal policy in New South Wales", in Valerie Chapman & Peter Read, eds., Terrible Hard Biscuits:  A Reader in Aboriginal History, Allen & Unwin and The Journal of Aboriginal History, 1996, page 271.  To the best of my knowledge, such a study has not been published, and indeed, given its rather explosive implications in the contemporary climate of opinion -- including the problems it could cause for native title claimants -- there would be many difficulties in carrying out such a study with the objectivity it would require.

65.  Heather Goodall, op. cit., page 105.  The "since 1927" is a reference to rallies held in that year in which Fred Maynard, a Hunter Valley Aborigine, called for the recognition of Aboriginal cultural achievements, pages 83-84.

66.  Robert Manne, "The stolen generations", Quadrant, January-February 1998.

67.  During conversations on the issue on 6-7 November 1997 when we were both attending a Liberty Fund workshop in Sydney.  Manne's essay was first presented on 27 November, ibid., page 53.

68.  Ibid., page 62.

69.  Christopher Pearson, "Some prisms in the genocide argument", Australian Financial Review, 12 January 1998.

70.  Leo Kuper, Genocide, op. cit., page 211.

71.  Raimond Gaita, "Genocide and pedantry", Quadrant, July-August 1997, pages 44-45;  "Genocide:  the Holocaust and the Aborigines", Quadrant, November 1997, page 17.

72.  Tony Koch, "Commissioner rejects need for guilt in saying 'sorry'", Courier-Mail, 28 May 1997.

73.  Colin Tatz, "Letter to the Editor", The Australian, 22 May 1997.

74.  For example, Colin Tatz, "Queensland's Aborigines:  natural justice and the rule of law", The Australian Quarterly, September 1963;  "Some Aboriginal thoughts", Dissent, Spring 1965;  Race Politics in Australia, University of New England Publishing Unit, 1979, pages 98-105.

75.  Victorian Section, Amnesty International, The Situation of Australian Aborigines, Report of Special Study Committee, November 1965.

76.  Andrew Marcus, op. cit., page 67.

77.  Aboriginal Welfare, Initial Conference of Commonwealth and State Aboriginal Authorities, Canberra, 21st to 23rd April 1937, Commonwealth Government Printer.

78.  Nigel Parbury, op. cit., page 112.

79.  Daniel Robinson, "Races and persons", The World and I, February 1992, page 497.

80.  Brendan O'Malley, "Fears grow over Melita", Courier-Mail, 26 July 1997;  Brendan O'Malley, "Dad's plea for Melita ignored by officials", Courier-Mail, 2 August 1997;  "Race the wrong priority in Melita's case", [editorial] Courier-Mail, 29 July 1997.

81.  Matt Price, "The people's advocate", The Australian, 10 June 1997.

82.  According to the biography of Sir Ronald on the HREOC's World Wide Web site, he was President of the Assembly, Uniting Church in Australia, 1988-91, and Moderator, WA Synod, Uniting Church in Australia, 1977-79.

83.  Phillip Ruddock, "Response to Question Without Notice from Wilson Tuckey on Stolen Children", House of Representatives Hansard, 2 June 1997.

84.  Paul Hasluck, op. cit., page 121.

85.  Colin McLeod, op. cit, page 73.

86.  P.W. Beckenham, op. cit, pages 14, 18-19, 22.

87.  See, for example, Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians, 2nd edition, Allen & Unwin, 1994, pages 101-119.

88.  Cf. the discussion on "justification", Bringing Them Home, pages 10-11.

89.  "White Canada not sorry enough", The Weekend Australian, 10-11 January 1998.

90.  Thomas Sowell, Preferential Policies:  An International Perspective, 1990, page 174.  I made a similar point in my last Backgrounder, "The Human Wrongs of Indigenous Rights", volume 9, number 1, page 7, in relation to the UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

91.  See Ron Brunton, "The False Culture Syndrome:  The Howard Government and the Commonwealth Hindmarsh Inquiry", Backgrounder, volume 8, number 2, March 1996.

92.  For example, Noel Preston, "A much-needed apology", Courier-Mail, 17 January 1998.

93.  Tracy Sutherland & Belinda Hickman, "Fraser presses PM to make a national apology", The Australian, 8 July 1997.

94.  For example, Senator Bob Collins, "Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families", Senate Hansard, 28 May 1997;  Alan Morris, "Native Title Amendment Bill 1997", House of Representatives Hansard, 22 October 1997.

95.  Matthew Franklin, "Beazley hands Labor the 'torch of dignity'", Courier-Mail, 20 January 1998.

96.  For a discussion of the possible consequences of such a declaration, see Ron Brunton, "The Human Wrongs of Indigenous Rights", op. cit., February 1997.

The Lure of Victimhood

Victimhood is powerful.  Victims don't have to accept blame for anything, as their victimhood provides a potent excuse for every kind of failure.  And they have carte blanche to wallow in contemporary society's most sought after emotional state -- moral outrage.

So when Canberra academic, media election forecaster, and monarchist Malcolm Mackerras was unsuccessful in his bid to win an ACT seat for the Constitutional Convention he quickly put his finger on the reason.  He was just another victim.

As a male in his fifties, and with a "Britishness" that went back for five generations, he obviously had no hope against his successful republican counterpart, who was a young woman of "Asian look".  But it is a sure bet that somewhere in an Australian university there is a young Asian female who believes that her failure to become an election-forecasting media star makes her a victim of not being a middle-aged male of "British look".

The production and counselling of victims is one of the growth industries of our times, going hand-in-hand with both the expansion of the welfare state and the escalating number of lawyers.  Welfare states love victims because they are dependent, they justify flourishing bureaucracies, and they are very predictable.  Lawyers love victims because they are very profitable.

Even people who attack the victimhood of others are often keen to be victims themselves.  Pauline Hanson, for instance, seems to have cultivated the perfect victim's whine.  And the video she made last year showed that she has embraced the ultimate fantasy of victimhood -- martyrdom through assassination.

Certainly, there have always been genuine victims.  Even today, there are victims of crime, racial discrimination and sexual harassment.  But there are two important differences between traditional victimhood and its present day versions.

Firstly, in the past, victimhood was confined to a relatively restricted section of the population.  But with our contemporary commitment to equality and social justice, it has been democratised, and is now available to everyone.

Actually, more than everyone.  A few years ago the American political scientist Aaron Wildavsky calculated that the sum total of all the groups who consider themselves to be oppressed victims adds up to 374 per cent of the population.

This figure was for the United States, of course.  But now, even for Australia, this figure would be hopelessly low.  Battalions of victim-makers are labouring tirelessly to extend the bases of victimhood.  Social workers, sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, ethicists, clerics, judges; all contribute their compassion and entrepreneurial flair.  And the truly talented join one of the specialist victim-making organisations, such as the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission.

Of course, the traditional bases for victimhood -- race, gender, class and physical disability -- still have a privileged role to play, and professional victim-makers fondly refer to them as "the grand old quartet".  These are the stalwarts, the axes of oppression that first got the industry off the ground.  But in the last fortnight alone, researchers in Britain have announced two new grounds for victimhood.

A group of psychiatrists in Wales discovered what may become a foundation stone of victimhood, a "bad luck gene" which makes born losers out of those who inherit it.  And a London psychiatrist identified a group of victims who are addicted to assisting other people.  He is assisting them with expensive government-funded counselling, and he gleefully suggested that up to 10 per cent of the population could suffer from this "compulsive helping disorder".  One unfortunate case involved a housewife who was hospitalised with exhaustion after she pushed a 115 kg woman in a wheelchair up hill and down dale for a week during a pilgrimage to Lourdes in France, even though the wheelchair-bound woman begged to be left alone.

The second big difference between the past and today is that traditional victimhood was a disagreeable status.  It offered no particular benefits or pleasures, and people tried hard to escape from it.  But now, quite apart from the financial rewards that flow from victimhood, it can also be lots of fun.

Victim lobby groups provide great opportunities for meeting exciting people with similar grievances to whom you can pour out all your misfortunes.  And victims have no problems with their self-esteem.  Anything bad or unpleasant about them is the direct result of the affliction that has made them a victim.  Indeed, only an insensitive and judgmental person would suggest that there might be something bad about a victim in the first place.

Nevertheless, there is a difficult group of well qualified people who stubbornly reject all the incentives of victimhood.  John Hyde is a typical example.  A right-handed man, he lost his right arm in a dreadful tractor accident when he was in his twenties.  But, as a victim of character peculiarities stemming from his upbringing, he refuses to take advantage of his disability, or allow it to interfere with his life.

In fact, John belongs to one of the saddest victim categories of all:  "Victims who don't want to be victims".  But his days of refusal may be numbered.  The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission is soon to become the Human Rights and Responsibilities Commission, and John and his kind could well be among its first targets.  After all, it is their responsibility to act like proper victims, because otherwise they could end up spoiling things for everyone else.

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Investor Focus Trend Pays Off

Although maximising shareholder value is widely accepted in Australia as managements' paramount goal, the chorus of dissent is growing louder.

The dissenters lament is that shareholder value comes at others' expense leaving, in its wake, higher unemployment and slower growth in the long term.

A new study by the McKinsey Global Institute should subdue the sceptics.  The study based on the performance of 2,700 companies from 20 countries over 10 years, found that shareholders and job seekers have a common interest:  high returns on capital.

The study shows that creating shareholder value is easier said than done.  Even in the US, where firms are very focused on shareholders' interest, only 55% of all firms and only 10 of the 50 largest firms studied generated above-expected returns for their shareholders over the 20 year study period.

In Germany -- the home of stakeholder capitalism where shareholder interest ranks on -- parr with that of management and unions -- less than 18% of companies performed above expectations.  On average, German companies under-performed by about 38% -- that is, their return, on average, fell 38% below expected yields.  The average continental European firm also achieved far below expectation.

The poor market performance of companies in Europe was not just the result of slower overall economic growth.  Indeed the study found that even after adjusting the data for macroeconomic conditions, the performance of continental European companies was 20% below expectation.  Whereas companies in the US, Canada and Australia, on average, performed about 10% above the return that prevailing macroeconomic conditions would have led one to expect.  Interestingly, the outstanding performance of companies in the erstwhile "tiger" economies of Asia -- Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand -- during the study period (1975-94) was almost entirely the result of a booming economy rather than the superior performance of management.

The study found -- not surprisingly -- a strong relationship between maximising shareholder value and productivity.  Companies which achieve above-expected returns also achieve above-average levels of productivity.

Importantly, however, it also found a strong statistical relationship between shareholder focus and job creation.  The negative shareholder spread in Europe was associated with an unemployment rate of about 2.5 percentage points above that expected, given macroeconomic conditions.  In contrast the US, Canada and Australia have cut their unemployment rates by 2 points by delivering more shareholder value.

What this means is that through maximising share values and productive firms also create more not less employment over the long term.

Indeed the study found evidence of a virtuous circle where a focus on shareholder value boosts productivity, employment and economic growth and in turn these outcomes give an additional boost to shareholders'.  Indeed it found that this "multiplier effect" will, over time, double the size of the original increase in shareholders value.

What this means for Australia is that we are on the right track.  Reductions in tariffs and other protective barriers have forced companies to set their benchmarks higher.  Corporate governance has become more transparent with management incentives more closely aligned to shareholder expectations.  Privatisation has increased the amount of capital under shareholder control and we are largely free of the concentration of ownership which characterises much of Europe.

This may mean tough times the corporate management, but it also means more jobs.

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A Nation of Challenge

Australia is experiencing its usual run of disasters and tragedies this summer.  The ruinous flood in Townsville and the threat that Cyclone Katrina now poses to North Queensland, twenty-five people drowning at surf beaches across the country, the death of four NSW volunteer fire-fighters in bushfires;  all are a reminder that we live in a land with more than its share of natural hazards.

But despite the pain and hardship that follow from such calamities, they also draw attention to something fine about our nation.  The thriving voluntary associations that Australians have developed to deal with these threats are evidence that a basic decency still prevails.

And perhaps more unexpectedly, the way we have responded to these recurrent natural crises may also help to explain why, comparatively speaking, Australia is well governed, with deeply rooted democratic sentiments and institutions.

How are these two matters connected?  In Making Democracy Work, a book that quickly became a classic when it was published five years ago, Robert Putnam, a Harvard professor of politics, offered a straightforward answer.

The introduction of a new set of regional governments throughout Italy in 1970, all with the same formal structures and powers, had allowed Putnam and his colleagues to carry out a unique experiment.  They began a twenty year long study of these new governments, and found that some proved to be inefficient and corrupt failures, while others had turned out to be great successes.

Putnam considered a number of possible reasons for this difference -- wealth, education, party politics, and so on -- but none offered a satisfactory explanation.  Finally, he discovered that one characteristic provided a correlation that was "virtually perfect".  Regions with the most effective and well-regarded governments were invariably those with the strongest networks of voluntary associations.

By belonging to such groups people learn the importance of civic obligations and accept a degree of personal responsibility for the welfare of their communities.  The groups also enhance their ability to co-operate with and trust fellow citizens, people who would otherwise be strangers with whom they had little in common.  This forms a "virtuous circle", creating a community whose values encourage individuals to join voluntary associations, which in turn reinforce the values and skills on which public-spiritedness depends.

Many kinds of organisations seem able to do this successfully, and Putnam stressed the contribution of mutual-aid co-operatives, sporting clubs, and cultural societies.  He did not specifically discuss voluntary groups set up on a permanent basis to provide various rescue and emergency services.  But these groups are probably more effective than any other kinds of associations at fostering the values and attitudes that lie at the heart of a good society.  I think there are two reasons for this.

Firstly, unlike organisations that are formed around particular philosophical or ideological views, such as political parties or lobby groups, members of service associations do not see themselves as promoting an interest or cause that might be opposed by others.  They genuinely work on behalf of everyone, not just those who are sympathetic to their views.  Of course, this applies to many kinds of charitable organisations as well.

But there is a further consideration that applies to associations such as volunteer fire brigades, emergency service units and surf life saving clubs.  The potential dangers that members of these groups may face makes it particularly important that they can trust each other.  So the skills which enhance their ability to co-operate effectively with the people of many different backgrounds from which membership is usually drawn form an important part of their training.

Australia is very well endowed with these kinds of voluntary groups, to the envy of many other countries.  About 50,000 men and women across the country are active members of State Emergency Service units, the voluntary organisation which has carried a major burden of helping people affected by this week's Townsville flood.

These highly-trained units, which work closely with local government structures, were established in different states at various times over the past forty years, and developed from post-war civil defence organisations.  SES members are on 24 hour call to respond to cyclones, floods, search and rescue emergencies and other crises.

Around 260,000 Australians -- and 52,000 Queenslanders -- are volunteer fire-fighters, belonging to local Rural Fire Brigades and similar organisations, which in some states go back to the middle of the last century.  As the tragic deaths in NSW remind us, these are the men and women who face possibly the greatest dangers of any volunteers, and like SES members, they are on 24 hour call.

80,000 Australian men and women belong to over 260 clubs affiliated with Surf Life Saving Australia.  The first of these clubs were formed in the early years of this century in NSW and Queensland, and the movement as a whole has a distinguished record with around 350,000 people saved from drowning.  In Queensland, no-one has ever drowned in an area patrolled by volunteer surf life savers.

But these membership figures understate the actual support such groups receive.  The intensive training requirements, and the demands that voluntary duties can make on time and personal safety means that it is not just their own commitment that is necessary -- active members must also have the backing of their families and employers.

Why do people join these kinds of associations?  There are a number of reasons, and not all of them are altruistic.  For many, a desire to meet a physical challenge, to prove one's courage in the face of nagging doubts, to enter into the camaraderie that these groups usually generate, or even to meet members of the opposite sex, may be just as important a motivation as the desire to perform a public service.

But in an important sense, the initial motivations don't matter much.  It is the social consequences that count.  For quite apart from the direct rescue and emergency services that these voluntary associations provide, they play a vital role in perpetuating the values of citizenship on which a free, democratic society depends.

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Doomsayers Scare Tactics

The usual burst of New Year's predictions is a reminder that when it comes to foretelling the future, there are two big differences between tribal cultures and ourselves.

Increasingly, we seem to expect dismal rather than optimistic predictions, especially in regards to the environment and public health.  And we have developed more elaborate reasons to explain why most of these predictions turn out to be wrong.

Or perhaps we are just better at forgetting the failures.  Hearing the predictions of a global warming catastrophe that accompanied last month's Kyoto conference on greenhouse gases, how many people remembered that less than twenty-five years ago, there was widespread panic about global cooling?

In the mid-1970s, scientific as well as popular magazines were warning about ominous signs of a world-wide decline in temperatures that would lead to devastating crop failures and political instability.  Some of the very scientists who have been most active in recent years in promoting global warming fears, such as the American climatologist Stephen Schneider, had previously hitched their fortunes to this coming ice-age.

At least Schneider has been frank enough to admit the tactical considerations that lie behind such pessimistic predictions.  In an interview with the anti-nuclear activist Jonathan Schell some years ago, Schneider said that to obtain broad public support for their causes, scientists "have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts that we might have ... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest".

Some gloomy predictions seem to fill such an important cultural and psychological need for our elites that even a long and illustrious record of failure does not dent the credibility of those who make them.  Since 1973, Lester Brown from the Worldwatch Institute in Washington D.C. has been warning that world population is about to outgrow food production.  In an article on environmental doomsday forecasts in its most recent issue, The Economist notes that in 1994, after 21 years of being wrong, Brown said "after 40 years of record food production gains, output per person has reversed with unanticipated consequences."

At least Brown has a consistent tally with his predictions.  His comments were followed by three years of big increases in world food output.  The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization Index of per capita food production gained over 5 per cent from 1993 till 1996 (the most recent year for which full statistics are available).

Such figures only seem to challenge Brown to redouble his efforts.  Last August, he released another missive, called The Agricultural Link:  How Environmental Deterioration Could Disrupt Economic Progress.  The message:  it's crunch time for agriculture, and the world is about to experience the "politics of scarcity".

Nevertheless, every year, when the Worldwatch Institute updates its State of the World report, journalists around the world respectfully report its forecasts, and neglect to enquire about the fate of earlier prophecies.

The American environmental journalist Gregg Easterbrook has formulated a law of doomsaying which holds that the greatest success goes to those who predict dreadful events which will occur between five and ten years in the future.  This time window is near enough to cause anxiety, far off enough for most people eventually to forget what was predicted, and long enough to allow for substantial book sales and paid lecture tours.

Easterbrook offers biologist Paul Ehrlich as a good example of a canny catastrophist.  In 1968 Ehrlich declared that "the battle to feed humanity is already lost, in the sense that we will not be able to prevent large-scale famines in the next decade".  A year later he predicted that by the mid-1970s, "smog disasters" would cause 200,000 Americans per year to drop dead.  He also warned that American life expectancy would decline to as low as 42 years.

Warming to his task, Ehrlich began to venture outside the Easterbrook window of opportunity, and make longer-range predictions.  In 1969 he told British biologists "if I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000".

Actually, he was a gambler, for in 1980 he accepted a wager offered by the economist Julian Simon, who had long ridiculed Ehrlich's predictions of devastating global shortages of crucial commodities.  Simon bet that the real price of any five natural resources of Ehrlich's own choosing would be lower in 1990 than in 1980, because recoverable reserves would continue to outstrip demand.

Ehrlich lost, and he would still have lost even if the prices had not been adjusted for inflation.  So what was the lesson he learnt?  Did he stop making his wild predictions and apologise for misleading millions with foolish predictions?  Of course not.  He increased his attacks on Simon's supposedly unrealistic and dangerous views.

In their famous study of a 1950s doomsday cult focused on aliens in flying saucers, When Prophecy Fails, the social psychologist Leon Festinger and his colleagues discovered that the failure of the world to end on the day predicted did not weaken the faith of those who had been strongly committed to the group.

On the contrary, the intensity of their involvement and the mutual support they gave each other after the world continued to exist meant that many of the cult's followers emerged even more convinced than before, and more dedicated to promoting their message to a wider audience.  Festinger's findings are as valid for contemporary environmental doomsayers as they were for the eccentric cultists he wrote about forty years ago.

By now, my own forecast should be obvious.  It is based on the simple futurological technique of extrapolation from the present.  I can confidently predict that environmentalists will continue to warn that unless we follow their bidding, the world will go to hell in a handbasket.

It has been a winning formula for them to date, ensuring considerable public influence and financial rewards.  But they are wrong.  Don't allow their jeremiahs to distract you from having a happy New Year.

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Not a powerful argument

Former SECV Commissioner, David Scott, (29/12) responded to my article (22/12) which argued that greenhouse controls would be the death knell of our efficient brown coal electricity industry in the Latrobe Valley.  Mr Scott suggests I am unaware of, or wilfully ignored, the SECV's plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

On the contrary, I am only too well aware of those plans.  One of the proposals to cut carbon dioxide emissions under the Cain/ Kirner Government included reducing emissions by decreasing output.  Part of this entailed ceasing to export electricity to South Australia.

As South Australia buys one-third of its electricity from Victoria, such a proposal was as uncharitable as it was unbusinesslike.  The strategy entailed closing down the Hazelwood power station, which the present Government has sold for $2.3 billion.  Other plans involved installing wind generation with energy costs five times that of brown coal stations.

Mr Scott actually suggests it would be better for Victorian taxpayers not to have the revenues from the Hazelwood sale.  We could, of course, buy it back;  we could also commence the windfarm construction program that he favours.  I doubt that any responsible political party would subscribe to such notions today.

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Response to the Regulatory Impact Statement on Proposed Children's Services Regulations 1997 (Victoria)

Submission

SUMMARY

Contrary to the Government's intentions, in the provision of child care services, we favours allowing parents to choose the standards of child care for their children.

The Government's proposed regulations are premised on it displacing parents in the determining how to care for children.  The proposals reject the notion that it is parents who are the most efficient custodians of their children's interests and interpose a bureaucracy and a credentialism where none is needed.  In doing so they will ensure that prices are increased, to the detriment of the parent-consumer and to the taxpayer who pays an increasing proportion of the costs.

The existing and proposed regulatory arrangements, are founded on a paternalism that says, "The gentlemen and gentlewomen in Spring Street know the citizen's true needs better than the citizen".  The Regulatory Impact Statement disguises such sentiments by making claims on the behalf of "the community", which is said to require services of a higher quality.  People in general always want higher quality.  Most would prefer to drive a BMW rather than a Holden, opt for a fine restaurant rather than Macdonald's, and buy designer clothing rather than ready-to-wear.  Few people actually choose the highest quality because they either cannot afford it or prefer to settle for something less and save money.

In the case of child care, the fact is that the customers need to be coerced into using services deemed by the sponsors of the regulation to be those they truly prefer.  Other standards of service, many of which have long been in operation, are to be declared illegal.  The sponsors do not want to leave it to chance that those responsible for the upbringing of children, the parents, might not share their expert opinion of what is sound practice.  They want instead to impose a plethora of requirements on those offering child care services.  These requirements are said to improve the quality of the services.  Whether or not they do, they will undoubtedly increase the price.  The regulatory denial of choice in the quality of services citizens may select is contrary to the concepts of economic and political freedom that the Government claims to espouse.

Our preferred approach to the provision of goods and services allows the free interplay of demand and supply.  Such an approach has long been demonstrated to offer the lowest cost goods and services and the diversity of supply that the market commonly requires.  Our view is not founded on some ideological prejudice, but on vast experience of how goods and services are provided most efficiently.

DIFFERING OVERALL APPROACHES

The approaches to the provision of child care can follow one of two routes.  The first is having government specify in considerable detail:

• who may provide the service,
• the facilities in which it may be provided
• the staff who may support the provider
• the times that the facility may be open
• the age profile of each facility's group of children
• the proportion of staff to children and the nature of that proportion as between staff of different levels of credentialled expertise
• the prices at which the service should be provided.

The alternative is to insist on rigorous publication of information on the centre so that parents can choose the quality they consider appropriate to their needs, preferences and resources.

Child care is an important matter for parents.  Choice of centre is not a decision that will be undertaken without major consideration.  By its nature, it is a "repeat purchase" and dissatisfaction will lead to changing the supplier.  This places pressure on the centre to perform in order to gain and retain its customer base.  With open access to the provision of child care services, each centre must continuously strive to provide value.  This market based approach allows needs and offerings to be matched without the intercession of a bureaucracy.

The usurping by the State of the need for the parent to exercise control may also lead to a form of "moral hazard".  Where a bureaucracy is vested with responsibility to ensure a standard is maintained, it is likely that users will be less vigilant in undertaking these tasks themselves.  Users will assume that others are undertaking the scrutiny role that they themselves would previously have performed.  This may lead to reduced resources being applied to the scrutiny.  It also may mean a less effective scrutiny where those undertaking it are focused on a rule.

MEASURING THE NEED FOR THE PROPOSED STANDARDS

Impact of Credentialism

The increase in the costs that the new regulations will cause is comprehensively demonstrated than in the credentialism that is being specified.  Rearing and caring for the young is something that requires no qualifications.  It is a natural function of all creatures.  Millions of generations have demonstrated that it requires no scholastic preparation.

What is proposed is an extension of present requirements of having qualified staff employed in the Class 2 centres which cater for children in care no more than 10 hours per week and for no more than 10 hours per week.  The qualified staff will also have to be in attendance at all times that children are present in the Class 1 centres.  A minimum of two staff will need to be in attendance at all times children are present.

Some may argued that child care is part of education and that qualified staff are equally important in this service as in schools themselves.  If this is the case, the preferred approach is act directly and to lower the school attendance age.

The adverse impacts of the proposals can be crystalised under three headings:

• First, they deny some of the least privileged members of society an opportunity to use their skills.  Although standards for acceptance to obtain the qualifications are not high, they will prove too onerous for many willing carers.  For others the need to obtain the credentials and forego paid employment will prove to be financially forbidding.  The impact is likely to be on people, especially women, from poor backgrounds, including aboriginals, and migrants.  Denying perfectly competent women from such backgrounds opportunities to use their skills to the fullest extent is a cruel and shameful strike by the educated classes who are devising and policing the regulations.
• Secondly, there is the needless cost of services foregone while the qualifications are being acquired.  If two years are taken to obtain the diploma, and the normal working period is twenty years, society incurs a cost increase of 10%.  Inexplicably, while it draws attention to the cost of HECS, the RIS fails to recognise the deferral of payed employment as a cost.  Of course, the cost is retrieved by the credentialled people in terms of their increased remuneration.  But that increased remuneration is paid for by the hapless consumer/taxpayer.  In the regulations being put forward, the voices of these people are not heard.  Most would not have the degree of interest to seek modification of the system, for, unlike those seeking the intensification of the regulations, they are not paid from the public purse to devise new ways of imposing their preferences.
• Thirdly, the regulations will directly increase wage costs.  According to the RIS (p.31) credentialled workers are paid 29-50% more than other workers.  This must be reflected in fees.

The higher costs will in all likelihood be picked up by governments.  But this means foisting the costs onto other taxpayers.  There is a case for some modest subsidy to those who would be otherwise be impoverished by not being able to work, but at present arrangements extend some sort of subsidy to the vast bulk of parents.

A revolt of taxpayers is currently underway throughout the western world and it seems likely that the subsidies will come under pressure in future years.  At that time it will prove very difficult to dismantle edifice of the excessive qualifications -- people will, in all good faith, have denied themselves income by undertaking unnecessary training.  They will resist the opening up of their positions to competitive labour supplies which have had not had to make the sacrifices.

Check on criminal records

If there are 10,000 workers in the industry in Victoria the checks, at $34 each, will cost $340,000.  This would be increased if volunteers are also to be checked ­ as they logically should be.  Moreover, these checks will not be effective in revealing a record of someone who was intent on hiding their past, as would surely be the case with people who might pose a danger to the children under their care.  The checks would therefore be a waste of money.

The regulatory impact statement contemplates, but rejects on the grounds of cost, a fingerprint test.  The mere consideration of this option is disturbing from the perspective of civil liberties.  While it is appropriate to take stringent care to avoid recruiting criminals in such occupations as the police, fingerprint checks are not the practice elsewhere.  Would those who are devising the regulations, those in the inspectorate and those in the Department also agree to be fingerprinted as a condition of their continued employment?

Staff:Child Ratios

The proposals are to increase staffing in the Class 2 centres, bringing them in line with the more stringent requirements in Class 1 centres.  Contrary to this approach, we considers that mandatory staffing levels ought to be abandoned.  Instead they should be replaced by a requirement that all centres prominently display up to date information on the numbers of children and numbers (and qualifications) of all staff and their hours of operations.  This will give parents the opportunity to select the services that suit their situations.

The absurdity of the proposed arrangements is demonstrated in the provisions that will prevent any flexibility in operations even where staff are not available.  There are, at present, five centres where staff cannot be recruited due to their geographic isolation and other centres where most of the children are aboriginal and no suitably qualified staff are available.  Those centres would be forced to close and the parents denied suitable child care.

While some totalitarian regimes have taken over children at a very early age, our preferred way of rearing children under 6 is for the State to intervene only in circumstances where the child is being abused or neglected.  The present arrangements assume the parent is unable to make the correct decisions about their children's well being.  The approach is irreconcilable with our notions of democracy and individual responsibility.  It will almost certainly engender costs additional to those seeking the services require.

Facilities

The Regulations cover the facilities in great detail.  These specify space per child, require natural light outdoor areas, child-specific toilets and wash basins and an ability of staff to observe children at all times.  While these requirements are doubtless inspired by well meaning considerations, a moment's reflection leads one to realize that a great many homes fall far short of these standards of appointment.

Should we not, therefore, require such facilities as a pre-condition of people having and bringing up their own children?  The logic of requiring such standards in child care standards is that they should be extended to all facilities where children are cared for.  Indeed, they are all the more necessary where the child is living in premises for 24 hours per day rather than the 40 hours per week in a centre.

This logic could dictate:

• that children should not be brought up in tall apartment blocks, especially where there is little natural light;
• that nobody should be allowed to have children unless they have first completed the required tertiary qualification;
• that there should be at least two people present to supervise children at all times, especially where there are more than three infants in the family;
• that homes in which children reside should be remodelled to ensure the wash basins and toilets are appropriate for those of small stature and that those using the facilities can be observed at all times.

CONCLUDING COMMENTs

The regulations as proposed represent a solution in search of a problem.  They are more exacting in many respects than are those governing the care of sick people.

The excessive costs of the proposed standards are most readily seen once they are compared with those required to bring up children in other situations.  The two most obvious comparisons are with the home and schools catering for 6 or 7 year old children.

School records do not require the considerable detail specified in the regulations for child care centres.  Nor do schools see the need to keep such exacting details of parents, court orders, languages spoken etc.

Clearly, all these requirements will call forth a policing system.  This will offer valuable career opportunities to public servants, many of whom are hostile to private sector provision of child care services.  The thousands of regulatory requirements will ensure that no centre could guarantee an unblemished outcome from inspection.  This may result in an inspectorate that will apply standards in a discriminatory fashion and pose a constant threat to the livelihood of many entrepreneurs.

If the proposed provisions are in line with the wishes of parents, the Government could set a standard and allow those centres that meet it to promote this to users.  Where parents choose not to send their children to these "accredited" centres, this should be their right.  If the "accredited" centres are what parents really wish to use, they will displace from the market those that do not meet the standard.

South Australia: Energy Situation and Policy Approach

Energy Forum Papers

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

THE POLICY BACKGROUND

Almost a decade ago the South Australian Government embarked on reducing the staffing levels of its electricity businesses.  In this it was ahead of other governments in Australia.  South Australia, if only in recognition of cost realities, also avoided "State chauvinism" in not pursuing self-sufficiency in power generation where imports were cheaper.

More recently the Government has been slow to see and pursue reform in energy:

• It has adopted the minimum degree of disaggregation of ETSA acceptable to other jurisdictions leaving its generator with market power, creating the potential for its transmission business to favour its sister distributor and providing insufficient competitive tension in distribution/retailing.
• It has been slow to open electricity retail markets to competition -- both in announcing a timetable for customers becoming contestable and in issuing licences to new providers.
• It has been slow to open the market for gas and has favoured electricity over gas in its welfare-subsidy policy.

POLICY PROPOSALS FOR THE FUTURE

The Government should move to further disaggregate its businesses by splitting the generation facilities into two separate firms and the existing ETSA into a transmission business and two retailer/distributors.

The Government should exercise leadership in promoting privatisation of its electricity assets.  Privatisation is likely to bring improved efficiencies and to offer greater assurances of a continued stream of income similar to that presently obtained from its electricity assets.  With a likely sale price in excess of $4 billion, privatisation would more than halve State debt.

As an interim stage the Government should:

• enlist private equity to install gas turbines at the Optima gas-fired generator at Torrens Island;
• disaggregate the dominant generation business, Optima, into two competing businesses and allow a competitive provision of generation to develop based on these two units, the new co-generation plant at Osborne and the Victorian interconnector

The Government would also be well advised to take advantage of the proposed Riverlink interconnect with NSW which offers power from NSW subsidised by NSW consumers.  Other agencies may wish to review the consistency of that proposal with national competition policy.

1. THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY AND GOVERNMENT

The South Australian economy has been growing more slowly than those of all States other than Tasmania over the past decade.  Although the State covers a vast area and has a well developed infrastructure in Adelaide, it is generally expected to continue to experience lower growth than in the rest of Australia.

The State has long been characterised by a high degree of government intervention in business and prominence within the economy in general.  In overall terms, South Australia presently spends 12% more per head than the average of the other States in supplying government services and its relative extravagance has tended to increase.  The following Figure shows the estimates by State.

Figure 1:  Relative Size of Australian Governments' ExpendituresSource:  Commonwealth Grants Commission

At least since the days of the Playford administration (1938-1965), Government has sought to play a major role in the directions of industry growth and in social matters.  Thus, the South Australian Housing Trust owns some 12% of the state's housing stock.  In renting out this property, the Trust fails to cover even its on-going expenses, while the very low rents tend to lock people into locations where there are fewer job opportunities.

Governments have also assumed a major role in energy policy, as illustrated in the history of the Electricity Trust of South Australia (ETSA). ⁽¹⁾, ⁽²⁾  As with its counterparts in other States, ETSA has been placed on a commercialised footing.  However, government policy has sought to resist disaggregating the electricity business.

In this respect, the Government has adopted a different position from those of Victoria, Queensland and to a lesser extent NSW, where the priority has been on reforming the industry to drive down prices by bringing increased competition.  An Industry Commission report ⁽³⁾ was the catalyst to bring some disaggregation but the report's recommendations did not go far in this direction and the Government's response further watered these down.  Generation remains subject to a degree of monopoly control by the main generation business (Optima Energy), while retail and transmission has been retained in a single organisation leaving some potential for monopoly abuse downstream.

The Government expenditures, together with the failure of the State Bank, have led to the State carrying a great deal of debt.  This totals some $7.7 billion, which, at $5,200 per capita, is twice the Australian average and exceeded only by Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

2. ENERGY GROWTH

Petroleum products remain the most important energy fuel and have been growing in line with the gradual increase in overall energy consumption.

The State's energy resources include the vast Roxby Downs uranium mine and the Cooper Basin gas reserves.  The State is a net importer of electricity and is expected to remain so as its coal reserves are poor quality and relatively distant from major loads while gas is likely to remain expensive for base-load generation.  Nuclear energy would probably be competitive but carries political risk.  The regulatory framework would itself be labyrinthine and it is doubtful that Australian Governments would be willing to offer a private developer the confidence needed to proceed in the face of minority group protests. ⁽⁴⁾

Over the past decade, average annual total energy consumption growth in South Australia has been a little over 1%.  Within this total, electricity consumption has been rising at just under 3_%.  Consumption of natural gas, having increased rapidly in the decade to 1985, was actually on a declining trend in the decade to 1996.  To some degree this was caused by the increased imports of electricity from Victoria that displaced gas-generated electricity.

Projections of growth by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) are for total energy to increase at an annual rate of a little over 1%, with petroleum products increasing in line with this but gas and electricity increasing at average annual rates of 3.1% and 3.7% respectively.

These trends are illustrated in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2Source:  Energy 1997 Projections, ABARE.

3. THE ELECTRICITY INDUSTRY

MARKET SIZE AND TRENDS

The South Australian electricity market is a little over 9,000 Gigawatt hours (GWh) per year, about one-third of the Queensland load and less than one-fifth of that of NSW.  Demand growth has been around 3% per annum over the past decade, with annual growth having slowed to just over 2% during the 1990s.  The industrial sector has tended to show the fastest rate of growth.

Figure 3 illustrates the trends.

Figure 3Source:  ESAA

South Australia, like Victoria and Western Australia, has a larger share of its energy accounted for by gas than by electricity.  However such statements need to be qualified by the different efficiencies of the fuels.  In this respect, for most purposes electricity is a far more convenient fuel to use than gas and its effective output per unit of input is much higher.  In South Australia, as in Western Australia, gas is used as a major source of fuel for electricity.

The relative importance of gas in South Australia reduces the share of electricity in the State's total reticulated energy to less than 30%.  This compares with over 40% for Australia as a whole.  The respective shares of electricity in total reticulated energy in South Australia and Australia as a whole are illustrated below.

Figure 4Source:  Gas Statistics, AGA

ELECTRICITY SUPPLY SOURCES

A key feature in the South Australian supply system is the interconnect with Victoria.  Established in 1990, the interconnect provided 3,777 GWh of electricity or over a third of the total of 10,576 GWh supplied.  The increased share of imported electricity has largely displaced electricity generated from gas.  The trends in generation are shown in Figure 5 below.

Figure 5Source:  ETSA Annual Report

SYSTEM EFFICIENCY

The South Australian system has shown strong productivity growth over the past decade.  Employee numbers have more than halved, sales per employee have increased threefold and real prices have been reduced by a quarter.

Even so, South Australia has major weaknesses in generation, where its labour productivity is considerably below that of other State systems and the availability of its stations lags that of the better performing systems.  Figure 6 illustrates these comparisons.

Figure 6Source:  ESAA

PRICES TO END-USERS

ETSA set itself a major goal in 1988 to improve price competitiveness by 1995.  In the years since 1991/92, the differential between South Australian prices and those of the eastern States have tended to narrow.  Figure 7 illustrates this with regard to Victoria.

Figure 7

4. THE GAS INDUSTRY

Reticulated gas is well established in South Australia.  Some 80% of households have access to the mains (compared with 88% in Victoria and 60% in NSW).

The South Australian gas industry is wholly privatised.  Production is by a consortium, the South Australian Cooper Basin Unit Producers, led by Santos with Esso and SAGASCO (Boral) as partners.  The gas is transported along a 1,989 km pipeline owned by Epic Energy (including 781 km Moomba to Adelaide) and distributed through a 6,425 km reticulation network by Envestra (controlled and serviced by Boral).

The significance of gas stems from the Cooper Basin discoveries some 30 years ago.  Gas has assumed considerable importance in the State, both as a commodity reticulated to end-users and as a source of electricity -- where it generates the equivalent amount of electricity as that produced locally from coal.

The State Government has tended to discriminate against reticulated gas in terms of subsidies to consumers -- the pensioner rebate covers electricity but not gas.  However, the industry has developed to be highly competitive and its private ownership has shielded it somewhat from the politically inspired cross-subsidies that have excessively compressed price differentials between industrial and domestic users in Victoria.

Gas prices on average in South Australia are the lowest within Australia.  In 1995/96, South Australian prices, at an average of $5.74/GJ, were 10-15 % below those of Victoria and NSW, and almost 40% below those of Queensland.  The gas price for industry in South Australia is lower than in all OECD countries other than USA and Canada.

This outcome has been achieved without squeezing earnings.  Some indicators of the operations in South Australia and other States are given in Table 1.

Table 1:  Comparative Gas Industry Data

	Gas Share of Non Transport Energy (%)	Earnings before Interest and Tax /Total earnings (%)	Mains (km) per Employee
South Australia	37.5	14.8	8.1
Victoria	43.5	14	12.7
NSW	17	12.6	13.4
Queensland	11.2	n.a.	6.8
Western Australia	41.7	10.9	16.7

5. THE ELECTRICITY BUSINESSES

INDUSTRY STRUCTURE

South Australia, like most other jurisdictions, has built up a vertically-integrated electricity business.  The State sought to maintain its business as a single entity, notwithstanding its agreement to structural reform in the Hilmer report and subsequent legislation.

Facing criticism from other jurisdictions as a result of its electricity business remaining integrated, the Government commissioned the Industry Commission (IC) to advise on the appropriate industry structure.  The IC's report ⁽⁵⁾ concluded that as well as repealing laws that prevent competition, the integration of generation, transmission, distribution and retailing should be replaced by a generation business and two to three retailer/distribution businesses.

The Government of South Australia rejected the split of the transmission and distribution from retailing.  Instead it created two separate businesses, ETSA Corporation and Optima Energy.

The Government also invited capital to build the Osborne co-generation facility owned by CUBE.  That plant's 180 MW capacity is fully contracted to ETSA, which is obliged to treat 130 MW as "must-run", with discretionary bidding for the remaining capacity.  Osborne is likely to provide 10% of the State's electricity.

The businesses are profiled below.

Table 2:  South Australian Electricity Businesses

	ETSA	Optima	Osborne	Other
Number of Customers (000s)	705
Total Sales (GWh)	9184
Lines in Service (km)	81531			n.a.
Generation (GWh)	291	6753	-	n.a.
Generation Capacity (MW)	84	2166	180	158
Sales Revenue ($M)	913	338
Profit before Tax and Interest ($M)	203	52
Total Assets ($M)	3176	457
Number of Employees	1663	881

Source:  ETSA Annual Report, ESAA and Office of Energy Policy.  Figures are for the year to June 1996.  The profit figures for Optima are extracted from the consolidated ETSA accounts.  Those same accounts indicate that $54 million out of the total $203 million earned by ETSA was earned by the transmission business.  Some employees and assets in ETSA also service Optima.

ETSA CORPORATION

ETSA Corporation has three subsidiaries.  ETSA Power is responsible for retailing and distribution;  ETSA Transmission for transmission and system control;  and ETSA Energy is responsible for gas trading.  ETSA Corporation owns virtually all of the State's assets in transmission and distribution.

As a retailer, ETSA has a larger home base than any of the Victorian businesses and ranks number two or three in the country in terms of customers and sales.  The size of ETSA in relation to other retailer/distributors is illustrated in Table 3. ⁽⁶⁾

Table 3:  The Size of Australian Retailers

Retail business	Number of customers (000s)	Sales (GWh)
Victoria
Powercor	537	7.3
Solaris	234	3.5
CitiPower	233	4.4
United Energy	527	6.4
Eastern Energy	470	5.1
New South Wales
Energy Australia	1306	20
Integral Energy	681	11.8
NorthPower	336	3.4
Advance Energy	113	1.77
Energy South	218	3.4
Australian Inland Energy	21	0.3
ETSA	700	9.2
Queensland
SEQUEB	874	11.7
Capricornia	87	1.4
Far North	92	0.7
Mackay	48	0.7
North Queensland	93	1
South West	91	0.5
Wide Bay	85	0.5
HEC	239	8

Source:  ESAA 1996

Comparative data on transmission are not readily available, partly because jurisdictions use different definitions of transmission.  In terms of the data available, ETSA is considerably smaller than the NSW, Victorian and Queensland grids.  From the data available it is difficult to determine whether or not it is a higher- or lower-cost system than those of Victoria and NSW.

Reflecting the nature of the system, equipment utilisation is relatively low, particularly in transmission.  Table 4 provides some comparisons with other State systems.

Table 4:  Comparisons Between Different State Transmission Systems

	Line length (over 66kV)	Losses (% of Energy Sent Out)	Labour Productivity	O&M Costs (exc. fixed costs) $/MWh	O&M Costs (inc. fixed costs) $/circ. km
ETSA	7,098	1.2	79.9	2.1	11,659
Transgrid	24,846	2.7	51	1.8	21,799
PowerNet	20,842	2.5	96	1.24	21,617
Powerlink	20,378	5.3	54.4	1.5	12,795
Western Power	6,624	3	64.6	2.4	15,870
HEC	3,491	4.9	57.8	1.12	8,838

Source:  ESAA

OPTIMA ENERGY

The generation assets, the Leigh Creek coal mine, the Northern Power Station, the Torrens Island Power Station and two gas turbine stations, constitute Optima Energy.

Optima Energy has a capacity of 2166 MW.  This is largely held in two major plants as indicated in Table 5.

Table 5:  Power Station Details

Power Station	Owner	Capacity (MW)	Units	Energy sent out 1996 (GWh)	Type	Location	Year of commissioning
Torrens Island	Optima Energy	800 480	200x4 120x4	3372	Steam/gas	16km north-west of Adelaide	1977 1967
Northern	Optima Energy	520	260x2	3372	Steam/coal	5km south of Port Augusta	1985
Thomas Playford `BÕ	Optima Energy	120	60x2	3	Steam/coal	5km south of Port Augusta	1960
Dry Creek	Optima Energy	156	52x3	4	Gas turbine/gas	9km north of Adelaide	1973
Mintaro	Optima Energy	90	90x1		Gas turbine/gas	110km north of Adelaide	1984
Snuggery	ETSA Corp	75	25x3	3	Gas turbine/gas	400km south-east of Adelaide	1978
Port Lincoln	ETSA Corp	9			Steam/diesel	Port Lincoln	1934

Source:  ESAA, ETSA Annual Report

In anticipation of shortages in the coming year, the Thomas Playford station has been overhauled and prepared for operation.

COMPETITIVE ARRANGEMENTS

South Australia is to be a participant in the national market from its commencement at the end March 1998.  Its progression to opening its markets to new competition is slower than that of the three eastern States as illustrated in the following table:

Table 6

Threshold	Type examples	NSW	Vic	Qld	SA
40 GWh	vast sites	1996	1994	1998	3/98 (20 GWh)
4 GWh	large office blocks	1997	1995	1999	7/98 (4 GWh)
750 MWh	supermarkets	1997	1996	2000	1/99
160 MWh	small office blocks	1998	1988	2000	1/2000
remainder		1999	2001	2001

South Australia, like the other jurisdictions, intends to phase in contestability of markets from the top down.  There is now considerable experience around Australia about the effects of these phase-ins and general satisfaction about their workability.  New Zealand, however, introduced contestability to all customers from the outset of its deregulation without adverse effects.  In South Australia, as in other jurisdictions, it is likely that the interpretation of load size for a customer seeking contestability will be liberal, as the Government would wish to avoid a firm taking action against it.  In this respect, Adelaide Brighton Cement, the State's largest gas consumer, has been free to seek electricity supplies from suppliers other than ETSA for two years.

While it is sometimes thought that a gradual phase-in offers incumbents opportunities to adjust to the new market situation, the corollary of this is that in shielding the incumbent supplier from competition the customers are paying more.

Except for some special areas, ⁽⁷⁾ ETSA currently holds the only retail, distribution and transmission licences.  There are no details about the licensing conditions for new retailers, a matter that lends concern to potential competitors to ETSA who are constrained from signing up customers in the State.  Queensland, unlike both NSW and Victoria, has adopted "mutual recognition" principles under which there is automatic acceptance of retailers who are licenced in another jurisdiction.  Such a measure offers cost savings both to governments and participants, while avoiding the appearance of creating barriers to new suppliers.

OPTIONS FOR AUGMENTING THE ELECTRICITY POWER SUPPLY

Current peak summer demand is 2300MW and although demand is only growing slowly, some new power reserves will be necessary.  As an interim step, one vintage station has been made ready;  and the cogeneration project at Osborne with a capacity of 180 MW is to come on line in July 1998.  Other supplies or supply options include:

• Augmenting the 500 MW interconnect with Victoria, possibly by 100 MW;
• Further cogeneration plants;
• A possible conversion of, and expansion to, the Torrens Island Power Station through combined-cycle gas investment;
• A possible new interconnect, "Riverlink", between SA and NSW of 250 MW.

Interconnects

Some 35% of South Australia's electricity is provided through the interconnect with Victoria.  For the most part, the increased supply from Victoria has displaced supplies from the gas powered Torrens Island plant -- gas usage was only two thirds of its 1987 level in 1996, whereas coal usage had increased somewhat.

The national market rules have provision for both entrepreneurial interlinks and those constructed at the behest of NEMMCO, the market manager.  Where non-entrepreneurial links are constructed there is no comparable market test to that present where businesses risk their own capital.  "Regulated" interconnects have a guaranteed return.

Moreover, the structure of the financing for transmission businesses places the overwhelming cost onto existing customers.  In terms of drivers for Riverlink, the cost would be incurred roughly 50/50 by ETSA Transmission and Transgrid of New South Wales.  These costs are passed on to consumers in the two jurisdictions.  Yet, Riverlink would mean an ability of New South Wales generators to seek higher priced markets in South Australia.  In supplying those markets, the price in New South Wales would be likely to rise.  Ironically, the consumers in Sydney would be paying for a facility that would also lead them to pay a higher price for their electricity.

Of course, there are other advantages to an increased number of links, including system security and greater competitive variety.  The increased supply availability brings much greater stability in prices, as is illustrated in the price trends in the Victorian, and to a lesser degree the NSW, market after the competitive interstate trading regime was introduced in May 1997.  The reduced price volatility is readily observed in the chart below.

Chart 1:  Pool Prices in NSW and Victoria January to August 1997

However, as the main benefit is obtained by New South Wales generators and South Australian consumers, the present payment arrangements offer perverse incentives.  Having half of the cost paid by NSW consumers may well result in a benefit for the South Australian consumer.  But a cynical view of the proposal is that it is a means by which the NSW Government subsidises power sales to South Australia to support the jobs of NSW power workers and coal miners.  Such subsidies are anti-competitive and lead to inefficiencies in the sourcing of production.

Doubtless, as in the case of the review by London Economics ⁽⁸⁾ of the Queensland/New South Wales interconnect, there could be studies undertaken to demonstrate an aggregate gain from the link.  But such studies will often find gains to consumers and producers from new ventures in excess of the price actually paid.  If such proposals go forward, they are likely to reduce the availability of investment funds for projects that do not rely upon annexing gains from other parties.  The real test is whether private operators would undertake the investment without having recourse to levying a regulated charge on third parties.

In this respect, a new interlink has similarities with a new generator.  It could be considered to be arbitraging the price between two markets -- buying in the market with the lower price and selling in the other market.  Some means of permitting this to occur needs to be devised if we are to avoid centrally-planned systems driven by non-commercial considerations.

6. POSSIBLE REFORM AGENDAS

FURTHER DISAGGREGATION OF OPTIMA

The minimum required by other jurisdictions if South Australia was to become part of the national market was to split ETSA into a retail/transmission/distribution business, which retained the name ETSA, and a generation business, Optima.  This leaves both components with considerable market power.

The interlink with Victoria provides the lowest cost power.  But once this is fully loaded, Optima's dominance offers it a strong incentive to ramp up the price.  Such "gaming" activity is not illegal under the Trade Practices Act.  Although impediments to "gaming" activity can be put in place by way of administrative oversight, the directors of corporatised businesses are required to seek to maximise their shareholder's wealth in any legal way.

In creating Optima, the Government was persuaded that there were advantages in having a portfolio generation business that could offer two availability types of electricity.  These claims have some merit and have formed the basis of incumbent managements' resistances to creating competitive units throughout Australia and other parts of the world.  It is unlikely, however, that the advantages of having a single portfolio outweigh the increased surveillance and loss of competitive pressure that dividing Optima into two entities would bring.

A viable market could operate with two separate Optima businesses bidding, a fully contracted Osborne generator, the Victorian interlink and a possible Riverlink combined with existing and possible future cogeneration plants.  This would reduce the risk of excessive prices resulting from the key position held by Optima and allow some greater flexibility by retailers to seek supply deals.

RETAIL, DISTRIBUTION AND TRANSMISSION

Although ETSA is ring-fenced into a transmission business and a retail/distribution business, further reform would appear to offer benefits.  The transmission business in other jurisdictions is split from distribution to prevent future enlargements favouring the sister business over others wishing to develop rival or by-pass distribution systems.  Such a split would not present serious difficulties, as transmission is relatively autonomous already and is a business with over $600 million of assets.

There are also calls to disaggregate the retail and distribution systems in electricity along lines being developed for gas in Victoria.  This entails the retail and distribution arms being structurally separated.  A full disaggregation would prevent retail arms of a distributor having a competitive advantage over rival firms through access to information.

These issues have been addressed in a previous paper, ⁽⁹⁾ which concluded that requiring a corporate split would offer few benefits.  The degree of customer churning without such a split testifies to the effectiveness of internal ring fencing.  Imposing a requirement on consumers to select an energy supplier in addition to a service supplier would inconvenience those who wish to avoid making such a choice.

As already discussed, ETSA as a retailer/distributor is quite large by Australian standards.  Previous papers ⁽¹⁰⁾ have reasoned that there is little to be gained by having very large units.  In Victoria one of the businesses, Solaris, is less than one-third the size of ETSA's retail/distribution arm and does not face an apparent lack of scale economies.

It is unlikely to be of major importance to have two South Australian domiciled retailer/distributors in the early rounds of contestability (though it is important to have the market opened up well in advance of the market opening if retailers are to be certain they may supply).  This is because those rounds are confined to making offers to well-informed major users.  For subsequent rounds, a second major State-based retailer would offer more choice to customers and the intra-State rivalry may lead to improved service and greater attention to costs.

For these reasons, it would be preferable to split ETSA into two roughly equal distributor/retailers.

PRIVATISATION

ETSA first began to reinvent itself as a business with the appointment of new management in 1988.  At that time there were over 6,000 employees.  Since then the workforce has been halved and corporatisation in 1994 stiffened the commercial approach.  The reductions in staffing have mirrored those of the two major States.  In terms of price, Figure 7 indicated how the premium South Australian customers faced compared to those in Victoria has reduced in recent years, especially for industrial users.

The logical step to consolidate and expand upon these gains is privatisation.

The Government made strong but not totally unambiguous pre-election statements that it would not privatise the businesses.  In this respect, the statements were stronger for ETSA than for Optima.  Both Labor and the Democrats are resolutely opposed to privatisation and control the Upper House.

While there is often a knee-jerk reaction against any privatisation (and nearly every candidate for privatisation is claimed to be especially sensitive), the outcome of privatisations in Australia and the rest of the world has been universally beneficial.  Politicians need to provide leadership, if necessary, like the NSW Treasurer, incurring some political risk, to press for reforms that take businesses out of public ownership and present the business risks to entrepreneurs and not taxpayers.  Businesses in government ownership will always be vulnerable to political patronage and arm-twisting to promote some short-term political advantage to the party in power.

The Victorian Government has demonstrated that its privatisations bring a stream of additional income to the State in the form of an annuity equivalent to over $500 million per year.  This will be increased as a result of the sale of PowerNet and the subsequent sales of the gas assets.  The Auditor-General estimated the savings at $622 million in 1997/98.

ASSET VALUATIONS OF THE ELECTRICITY BUSINESSES

A major revaluation took place in 1996, which raised the value of the assets by $1,248 million, placing the value of the equity at $2,581 million.  The revaluation shifted the relative value of ETSA's assets.  It led to the following changes:

Table 7

Asset	Previous Valuation	New Valuation
Power stations and Leigh Creek Coalfield	$1098 million	$387 million
Transmission system	$267 million	$628 million
Distribution system	$645 million	$2120 million

The revaluation has the effect of locking-in values at the new levels, a matter of some significance in view of the Commonwealth's recent stipulations on the asset valuations for government businesses that are to be privatised.  The Commonwealth, in an attempt to obtain for itself (at the expense of the State Governments) a greater share of the revenue from sale of assets, is to allow only the depreciation value specified at 30 June 1997 to be written-off for tax purposes.  The South Australian revaluations are likely to offset the effects of that action should the State wish to privatise its lines assets.  However, the power stations would appear to be capable of raising rather more than the $387 million book value if previous sales in Victoria are a guide.  Table 8 gives the value achieved for the Victorian generators.

Table 8:  Sale Proceeds and Earnings Multiples Achieved from the Sale of Power Stations ^(a)

	Loy Yang Power	Hazelwood and Energy Brix (b)	Yallourn Energy
Price:earnings multiples
1995-96	11.9	20.1	9.7
1996-97	13.1	24.1	9.3
Average 95/96-98/99	11.8	17.8	9
Sale proceeds ($m)	4594	2261	2146
Capacity (MW)	2000	1770	1450

^(a) The earnings multiples are based on projected earnings before depreciation, interest, tax and abnormal items (EBDIT), as per the Information Memorandum for each company (in nominal dollars).

^(b) The EBDIT for Energy Brix only represents 2 per cent of the total combined EBDIT for Hazelwood and Energy Brix for the period July 1995 to June 1999.

On the basis of Victorian sales and including the associated coal mine, the 520 MW Northern Power Station, which is the same vintage as Loy Yang, would be valued at between $900 million (based on the average receipts for the Victorian generators) and $1190 million (on Loy Yang multiples).  Even with a hefty discount for the higher costs, a valuation of $500 million seems possible.  The Torrens Island 1280 MW gas plant is between 20- and 30-years old and may have a low residual value in a nationally integrated market.

Transmission

The Victorian system PowerNet is the only example of privatisation of an Australian transmission system.  That business, which is a system more than twice the size of South Australia's, was sold for over $2.7 billion.

It is difficult to determine the value of other systems from this valuation, which exceeded expectations by a margin at least as high as previous electricity privatisations.  Some of the difficulties in determining a valuation include:

• the definition of transmission as opposed to distribution facilities;
• the age of the lines and their reliability;
• the South Australian system has a low level of transmission losses but experiences considerably more downtime and has a cost structure approximately double that of Victoria;
• the cost structures, where in O&M terms South Australia is twice that of Victoria;  and
• the charges allocated to the transmission business.

The written-down valuation of the transmission system was put at $628 million at June 1996, having been revalued from $267 million at June 1995.

Distribution and Retail

Distribution businesses provide a secure form of revenue.  In Victoria, they have sold on EBIT multiples of between 13 and 19 and between $3000 and $6000 per customer as illustrated in the following table:

Table 9:  Victorian Electricity Distribution Companies at Time of Sale, Financial Profile

Company	Owner	Sale price ($M) (excl. franchise fees)	Customers 1994/95	$/ Customer	Net Assets 1994/95 ($M)	Return on Assets %	EBIT ($M) 1994/95	EBIT Multiple 1994/95
United Energy	Utilicorp/AMP	1,550	520,000	2,980			120	12.92
Solaris Power	Energy Initiative/AGL	950	232,500	4,086	8.2	10.62	52	18.27
Eastern Energy	Texas Utilities	2,080	470,000	4,468	17.05	14.52	141	14.75
CitiPower	Entergy Corp	1,600	230,000	6,086	13.06	12.23	85	18.82
Powercor	Pacificorp	2,300	537,000	4,004	23.75	13.21	159	14.47
	Total/Average	1,696	1,989,500	4,325	15.515	12.645	111.4	15.85

Source:  Various

ETSA distribution and retail, on a sale price of $4000 per customer, would be worth $2.8 billion.

Overall Revenues from Privatisation

With generators raising some $600 million, the distribution system some $2.8 billion and the transmission business worth $700 million, a figure close to its book value, ETSA would return over $4 billion in a sale process.  This is equivalent to over half the State's net debt and invested at 6% would return $240 million per annum.

At the present time, the government earns a similar amount to this in tax and dividends from the ETSA businesses.  This income, however, is derived from firms operating as monopolies in a sheltered market.  Notwithstanding the advances ETSA has made in efficiency over recent years, there is certain to be some loss of market share and a marked reduction in prices and revenues as the market is opened to competition.  While this intensified competition will be of great benefit to the people and economy of South Australia, it will reduce the stream of funds to the Treasury.

These considerations suggest that early action by the State to divest its electricity assets would be to its advantage.

An Interim Approach

For the present, the South Australian Government has some options to implement a limited privatisation programme involving Optima.  Optima has two main generators, Torrens Island (gas) and Northern (using Leigh Creek coal).  Northern is cheaper and used for base power and Torrens has greater flexibility and is brought on-line when the lower cost supplies from the interlink and Northern need to be augmented or are unavailable.

The cheapest power is that supplied from Victoria which meets some 35% of the market.  A further 10% (fully contracted to ETSA) will be provided by the Osborne facility to come on stream in July 1998.  Other similar co-generation facilities are under consideration.  There is also the proposal for a link with NSW which will provide up to an additional 15% of the market.

One means to privatisation could be arranged through the Torrens Island plant.  This gas facility could profitably be re-powered by gas turbines at a cost of $150-200 million.  A feasibility study regarding this is presently nearing completion.  The re-powering could be undertaken by private ownership up to 49.9% without this requiring legislation.  Such a move, unlike any concerning the coal mine supplying the Northern power station, would not require legislation.  This changed ownership mix would also give the opportunity to introduce a new player into competition.

Gas Structural Reform

The deregulation timetable for the gas industry opens up to competition the 100 TJ customers (about 40 in the State) in April 1998.  A further 110 customers (those over 10 TJ per annum) will become contestable in July 1999.  The remaining business customers (about 8,000) will become contestable in July 2000 and present plans are to release households from their captive customer status in July 2001.

The key impediment to competitive provision in South Australia, as in the eastern States is the monopoly supply.  The Industry Commission ⁽¹¹⁾ noted that competition requires either basin-on-basin rivalry or rival producers within the same basin and noted that such competition did not then exist in South Australia and Victoria.  The link between NSW and Victoria will be completed in 1998 allowing sales that are in effect basin on basin competition in both States and into South Australia.

Within the Cooper Basin, the Santos led consortium is obliged to surrender certain prospective leases in 1999 (PEL 5 and 6).  However, the consortium has recently been successful in taking control of a further highly prospective area, the Nappameri Trough.

The ability of third parties and for the incumbent suppliers, Optima and Boral to compete is limited by the capacity of the transmission pipeline.  At present this is fully booked as far as the 95 Petajoules of firm capacity is concerned.  Moreover, if either Boral or Optima were to win a customer from its rival, they would need to obtain the rival's permission for release of capacity.  Some of the monopoly may be broken by the allocation of 15 Petajoules to ETSA Gas Trading from July 1998.  Some 11 Petajoules is required by the Osborne facility leaving 4 Petajoules available to contest other customers.

To facilitate competition, the Government could consider having the capacity of the transmission pipeline allocated by customer rather than by retailer.

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ENDNOTES

1.  Linn, R., "ETSA", ETSA Corporation 1996

2.  Technical regulation in energy is an area where there is arguably less regulation in South Australia than in other States.  The State's Office of Energy Policy takes pride in having between a third and one-seventh of the regulatory staff per customer compared with the other States.  See Office of Energy Policy, Annual Report 1996/97, p. 33.

3.  The Electricity Industry of South Australia, Industry Commission, 15 March 1996.

4.  In this respect, even in Victoria, nuclear power generation is illegal.

5.  The Electricity Industry of South Australia, Industry Commission, 15 March 1996.

6.  Data availability has made it difficult to determine the relative efficiency of distribution systems in Australia.  Since corporatisation, the ESAA cost estimates indicate a near doubling of Victorian businesses O&M costs, both including and excluding fixed costs.  This outcome doubtless reflects the different accountancy conventions used by the corporatised and privatised businesses, and may partly reflect redundancy packages which have been a major feature in the increased efficiency brought about in Victoria.

7.  These cover traditional supply of remote areas and the BHP and Western Mining supplies to their own facilities at Roxby Downs and Whyalla.

8.  Independent review of the economic costs and benefits of interconnections of the Queensland and New South Wales electricity grids, London Economics, August 1997.

9.  Wood, R.J., "Separation of Retail and Distribution in Electricity Supply", Energy Forum Paper No. 2, February 1997.

10.  For example, Wood, R.J., "Retail Competition in the NSW Electricity Market", Energy Forum Issues Paper No. 1, October 1996.

11.  Australian Gas Industry and Markets Study, Industry Commission, 1995.