Text on screen
The Jean McLean Oration 2021
Honouring the long and distinguished career of Jean McLean AM as a politician and as an activist, and the significant contribution she has made to public life.
[Music]
Photos of Jean McLean AM throughout her professional life.
Professor Adam Shoemaker
Vice-Chancellor, Victoria University
Good evening, everyone.
What an amazing presentation that was, and it's just a taste of things to come.
As I said, good evening to all, my name is Adam Shoemaker and I'm delighted to be the Vice Chancellor of Victoria University.
And I'm particularly pleased to be here tonight, and with you and all of us together to join for an evening for the inaugural Jean McLean oration.
I'd like to begin by acknowledging the Elders, the families and the forebears of the Boonwurrung, Woiwurrung and Wathaurung who are as you know are the custodians of university land and have been for many centuries.
We're proud to acknowledge that the land on which we stand, we speak and learn is the place of the age old ceremonies of initiation and renewal and celebration and of the Kulin people's living culture had and has a unique role in the life of the regions where we may be, guides us in our research, our teaching and our service every day.
I'd like to offer a particularly warm welcome tonight to the Honourable Jean McLean AM, of course, the professor of the Honourable Barry Jones AC, the Honourable Steve Bracks AC, our Chancellor, council members of Victoria University.
And of course colleagues, partners and friends of the University, welcome to all.
It is the case that universities have a special role in the life of this state and the city and this nation. And I think most universities would claim to serve their communities.
Victoria University has clearly done so over the past 30 years and for the preceding century of its antecedent institutions in the west of Melbourne.
We're incredibly proud of that history and we're also proud of the fact that we're progressive. We care and we act.
Our new strategic plan for the university is entitled start well, finish brilliantly. And it's underpinned by values, values of being always welcoming, ethical, shaping the future, and doing so together at a time when the world really needs all four more than ever. And I think those values go beyond vocabulary.
They're a reflection of our beliefs and our ethics, which in turn, influences our practice. The Honourable Jean McLean AM simply embodies those VU values to a tee.
Over her extraordinary career, and again, I refer to those images you've just seen, she has become an outstanding illustration of how personal commitment can change outcomes for so many other people.
Which is what we aim to do here at the university as well. We're incredibly lucky to have Jean as a member of our community at VU for 17 years and counting, happily.
This is tonight a very special new event on the calendar of Victoria University. And we're so pleased we can honour her contribution in this new way.
I'm now delighted to introduce to you the chancellor of Victoria University, the Honourable Steve Bracks AC, who will tell you a little more about Jean.
Thank you so much, colleagues.
The Honourable Steve Bracks AC
Chancellor, Victoria University
Thank you, Adam. Thank you very much, Adam.
I'd also like to pay my respects to Elders past and present and extend my respect to Aboriginal people who are present today. I acknowledge that the footprints of the Kulin are found across the landscape of our region.
I'm also pleased to welcome the Honourable Dr Jean McLean AM and Professor the Honourable Dr Barry Jones AC.
Thank you for joining us at the inaugural Jean McLean oration. Victoria University created this event to honour the distinguished career of the Honourable Dr Jean McLean AM.
Over many decades, Jean has made an extraordinary contribution to Victoria University and to public life. Jean is a passionate and formidable campaigner for social justice. She was the convenor of the Save Our Sons movement, which from 1965 to 1973 campaigned against conscription, and Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War.
In 1970, Jean spent two weeks in Fairlea Women's Prison. She was one of a group of anti-conscription women, known as The Fairlea Five. Charged with trespass when they entered the conscription office to hand out leaflets.
Following Indonesia's invasion of what was then Portuguese Timor in 1975, Jean campaigned for Indonesia's withdrawal. Their tireless efforts for the Timorese which are ongoing, were recognised by the Timor-Leste government when she was awarded the Order of Timor-Leste by the President of the Republic in 2015.
Three decades earlier in 1985 Jean was elected to the legislative council for the Australian Labor Party, serving until her retirement in 1999. As a parliamentarian Jean was a keen member of the Drugs and Crime Prevention and Law Reform Committees.
I was proud to have someone with Jean's commitment to commitment to Labor values as a part of our government. Jean was a councillor of Victoria University for nine years and in 2005, the University awarded her an honorary doctorate for her service.
During that time, she continued her passionate support for the Timorese here in Victoria and in Dili. We are honoured indeed that Jean consented to Victoria University holding a biennial oration in her name.
We are also honoured that Professor Barry Jones AC agreed to deliver the inaugural Jean McLean oration.
[Inaudible] opening the Victorian Legislative assembly from 1972 to 1977 before moving to Canberra as a member for Lalor from 1977 to 1998.
Barry was the Minister for Science, Minister for Prices and Consumer Affairs, and Minister for Small Business and Customs before becoming the National President of the Australian Labor Party in 1992.
Barry took a leading role in campaigns to abolish the death penalty and to revive the Australian film industry. He has served on a number of boards including the Executive Board of UNESCO in Paris from 1991 to 1995.
Barry was awarded an AO in 1993 and an AC in 2014 for his contribution to science, humanities, politics and public health organisations. He is high on the National Trust list of Australia's 100 living national treasures.
It's with great anticipation that I welcome Barry to share his insight on the topic, the democratic crisis. Whatever happened to courage, principle commitment, accountability, Professor Jones.
Professor The Honourable Barry Jones AC
Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Jean and family, ladies and gentlemen.
It was a particular honour for me to have been invited to deliver the first Jean McLean oration. And she has demonstrated, I think, an extraordinary commitment to many issues over a long period of time and we do well to pay her appropriate honour.
She has an exemplary record as a passionate campaigner for great causes, many of them unpopular at the time. She was imprisoned in 1971 for her protests against conscription in the Vietnam War. And as the Chancellor pointed out, served in the Victorian Parliament in the Red Morgue, at the upper house between 1985 and 1999, was a tireless campaigner for affirmative action. And of course, as he said, supported Timor-Leste very powerfully over a long time and played such a critical role in the establishment and promotion of Victoria University.
Jean Crosland was born in London in 1934. Her father Arthur Crosland was an industrial scientist, her mother Pauline Berezovski, a very able teacher, had been born in Russia and migrated to Canada.
The Crosland family arrived in Australia in 1937. The Victorian Parliament's database records her education rather mysteriously as 'tutored at home and short periods at state and high schools'. She was untainted by exposure to a university.
Jean entered the workforce at the age of 14 and had a variety of jobs. She describes herself modestly as having been at various times a non-typing secretary, an occasional model for a furrier and running a coffee shop in Cheltenham.
In 1957 she married Eric McLean, a great encourager and a very successful builder. They had a son and daughter Adam and Rebecca.
Jean joined the Labor Party in 1965 and I was very grateful for her empathic support in the campaign to reprieve Ronald Ryan in 1967. And as the Chancellor said, she'd become convener of the Save Our Sons movement in 1965 and kept that role until 73.
It's interesting if you read what the Department of Veterans Affairs records about Jean's prison experience in its ANZAC portal website. And I quote, prison was hell, screamed the headlines in Melbourne on 19th of April 1971.
The five women released from prison yesterday all lost weight during their 11 days behind bars. The five women in question Joan Coxsedge, Jean McLean, Chris Cathie, Jo Maclaine-Cross and Irene Miller were arrested under a charge of wilful trespass for distributing leaflets on conscientious objection to boys registering for National Service at the Department of Labor and National Service.
Already well known for their protest activities, the five women were each sentenced to 14 days in Melbourne's Fairlea Prison. The case received wide publicity, generated a series of vigils and rallies outside the prison and brought the Save Our Sons movement to the attention of people who had not previously been aware of its existence.
The media emphasised the imprisoned women’s' role as parents, noting that between them, they had 25 children, all of whom would have to spend Easter that year without their mothers.
The Age called them gaoled wives. The Fairlea Five were released after 11 days.
Jean McLean remembered the prison as being soul destroying and an institution rivalled only by something out of the 18th century. Their experience with incarceration was mercifully brief. But as women with obvious social conscience, they lobbied to have conditions improved for those whose imprisonment would last much longer.
In 2001, the five women received an official invitation to visit Vietnam where they met survivors of the war and the disabled children of veterans, among many others.
As I said Jean McLean and also Joan Coxsedge were both members of the Victorian Parliament, and Chris Cathie, who was then married to a past (and future) Labor MP. Jean was jailed again for non-payment of fines and spent another night in a bluestone lockup.
This year, a graphic novel about this time and Jean's role in it, was published by Allen & Unwin, it's called Underground, Marsupial Outlaws and Other Rebels of Australia's War in Vietnam, and it's by Mirranda Burton. It centres on Jean's role as a suburban wife, mother, and coffee shop manager, who founded the Save Our Sons Movement with encouragement by her husband, and collaboration with the painter Clifton Pugh and his wife Marlene, at Cottlesbridge.
The work also involves Bill Cantwell, an Australian soldier who was a victim of the Vietnam engagement, Mai Ho a young Vietnamese woman and Hooper, the Pugh's wombat.
It would be difficult now, 50 years on, to drive through a rational case for military involvement in the Vietnam War. None of the justifications asserted by Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon, or Harold Holt, and Billy McMahon, make any sense now.
The fall of Saigon had zero effect on Australia's national security. It was soon recognised that the war, was essentially, a campaign for the Vietnamese national unity, not driven by China or the USSR and not part of a global expansion.
Australia was soon offering aid to Hanoi and developing trade links. When Prime Minister John Howard went to Vietnam in 2006 on a trade mission, he was asked if he had second thoughts on the Vietnam War, which he'd supported as a young man.
He cautiously replied that he thought the reasons for entering still held good. I read this as coded language for paying an insurance premium to the US for future protection.
Essentially, the same rationale for joining the US in invading Iraq in 2003. Jean contested the Legislative Council seat of Monash in 1973, and lost. But then was director of the Prahran College of Advanced Education Union, and was the Australian Council of Trade Unions Arts Officer from 1981 to 1985, then 14 years in the Victorian Parliament.
In 1975, Portugal gave up its colonies, including East Timor. East Timor's annexation by Indonesia was acquiesced in by the Ford Administration in the US, and the Whitlam Government in Australia. Justification was purely pragmatic.
Both Gerald Ford and Gough Whitlam thought that an independent East Timor would be economically non-viable, and would certainly soon become a failed state and a potential threat to stability in the region.
Jean became a passionate advocate for its independence, and I agreed with her strongly on that issue. She developed a close working relationship with José Ramos-Horta, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996. And has been linked with Victoria University for many years,
She's also close to Xanana Gusmão.
From 1998, she visited what was to become Timor-Leste more than 20 times, and in 2016, was awarded the Order of Timor-Leste. She was also a convener of the Namibia Solidarity Association. She also advocated independence for West Papua, controlled by Indonesia to 1962.
She served on the board of the Victorian College of the Arts and, of course, at the Victoria University Council. On Australia Day 2019, she was awarded with an OAM for significant service to international relations and to the Parliament of Victoria.
Jean was a courageous person who took on long-term projects. She knew the importance of involving government in solutions to big problems and addressing them over time. And because we do not pay attention to ways of solving problems of our country as Jean did, we have a democratic crisis.
She's a great Australian, and we do well to celebrate her courage. Now, more than ever, we need from leaders and the community, the sort of courage she displayed.
I'll say something about September the 11th 2001 and its impact 20 years on. This week has marked the 20th anniversary of the attack on the United States by Al-Qaeda on September the 11th 2001.
Two Boeing 767s crashed into the Twin Towers in Manhattan, a Boeing 757 into the Pentagon in Washington, and another 757 into a field in Pennsylvania, resulting in almost 3,000 deaths and more than 25,000 injuries.
Some thousands of victims later diagnosed with cancers attributable to the toxins released. If Osama bin Laden's goal was to damage Western liberal democracy, then he succeeded far more than he could have hoped. However, much of the damage is self-inflicted quickly, as Western leaders turned against their greatest strength of free, open, tolerant, reforming, curiosity and evidence driven society. 9/11 in 2001 began 20 years of moral panic in which liberal democracies morph into national security states.
Adopting secrecy as a standard operating practice, more so, in Australia, surprisingly, than in the United States, marked by secret trials, xenophobia, and stigmatising of the other, and adopting harsh punitive attitudes towards refugees.
An approach that proved to be politically popular, and was compounded by bipartisan support. Capturing the barbaric cruelty of elements of the jihadist movement, particularly Islamic State, beheadings, crucifixions, the killing of civilians, suicide bombers.
The central beliefs of jihadists and ISIS militants include the following, hostility to science and the scientific method, rejection of evidence-based decision-making.
Hostility to modernity, resistance to feminism, and the changing roles of women. Hierarchy, paternalism, theocracy, fervent belief, dogmatism, homophobia, self-definitionist fighters, and need to have enemies to provide the rationale for actions.
Inability to comprehend differing points of view, fundamentalism, willingness to use force, cultivation of the siege mentality, dismissing of the United Nations and international opinion, preparedness to damage World Heritage Sites.
Suppression of dissent, turning a blind eye to cruelty, acceptance of heads must roll as an operating principle. Acting outside the rule of law, adopting principles that ends justify means, punishing critics or whistleblowers, opposition to critical thinking and analysis, simple explanations for complex problems.
Elements of this disturbing mindset is to be found in Australia, sometimes in unexpected places. Our Prime Minister Scott Morrison had thoughtfully pointed out that women should be grateful that they're not shot at.
The democratic crisis, democracy faces its greatest existential crisis since the 1930s. Hitler used democratic forms to come to power in Germany, but rejected the democratic ethos.
What is sometimes called the Enlightenment Project, has come under sustained attack in the United States, much of Europe and to a lesser degree, so far, Australia. It’s been a sharp crisis of confidence in democratic practice and the quality of leadership with the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Poland, many other European states, Russia, Turkey, most of South America, and virtually all of Africa.
The global scene was marked by the rise of rightist, nationalist, anti-immigrant, and protectionist parties. Authoritarian rule, corrupted elections, with vested interests, setting agendas.
Leaders who refuse to be accountable for their actions, corruption accepted as normal, retail politics where the leaders fail to ask for vote proposition, is it right?
But will it sell in a new era in which feeling and opinion displaced analysis and evidence and leaders fail to lead? Australian democracy is under serious threat and neither the Coalition or the federal ALP have any vision beyond the elections of 2022.
Citizens have to be prepared to engage and challenge to tackle the global threat of climate change. The Coalition captain of the fossil fuel lobby lies about meeting global targets for emissions reductions.
And the opposition's lying on climate change is vague and shifty.
The states, irrespective of political allegiances have been prepared to set targets.
The Commonwealth has not, largely because there will be 3 elections before 2030, and 10 before 2050. The well-respected Democracy Index 2020, published by the Economist Intelligence Unit calculates only 8.4% of the world's population live in a full democracy.
Australia is one of them, but we cannot take it for granted. We've become increasingly secretive, authoritarian, sensitive to criticism, and corrupt. The death of debate, and loss of language and memory.
In 1977, when I was first elected to the Commonwealth Parliament only 2% of Australians were graduates and 53% of Members of Parliament. In 2021, we have a much more tertiary qualified community, 7 million graduates and 85% of MP's have degrees.
That ought to make a far higher quality debate, discussion on issues than at any time in our history, right?
Wrong, actually, paradoxically, there appears to be an inverse relationship between the number of graduates in parliament and the quality of political debate.
And it's now impossible to get a straight answer to a question.
Our parliaments are far more representative as a cross-section of a community than they've ever been. Not perfect, but far better, more women, not enough, some younger members, far more from non-English speaking backgrounds.
Surely that ought to result in far better debates than in the bad old days of the 70s and 80s. With all male, white, English-speaking parliaments, right?
Wrong, again, politics has become a profession.
This is the era, as I said, of retail politics complicated by some feudal elements in factions, and patronage. The major parties have been privatised, ruled by factions who exercise power by keeping the numbers of active, inquisitive, party members well down.
There are 15 million voters and probably no more than 30,000 members of the major parties, that is 0.2% of the total voter population, who are actually alive and we know that they are members.
Typically, members of parliament are drawn from a very narrow gene pool and follow a depressingly similar career line. It starts off from student politics, becoming a graduate, becoming a party, or union, or corporate, or lobby group organiser, then becoming attached to a parliamentary minder.
Then an MP or a senator, then a minister. Then they resign to have time with their family. Then they turn up as lobbyists, gambling, banks, China, minerals.
The Liberal Party is essentially the party of the status quo. The reinforcement of the familiar. Historically, the ALP was the party of change, but I doubt if this is still true. The challenge for Labor is this, in an expanding dynamic society, can the ALP concentrate on emphasising its aging and contracting traditional base with a back to the 1980's appeal?
In the decade 1966 to 75, Australian politicians were generally well ahead of public opinion on many issues.
For example, a mass migration program, ending white Australia, abolishing the death penalty. Divorce law reform, homosexual decriminalisation, access to abortion, recognising the People's Republic of China.
Starting to reduce tariff protection, support for the arts, changing attitudes to the Vietnam war and conscription. Affirmative action for women, needs based education, ending censorship, admitting large numbers of refugees, expanding tertiary education.
Could we find an equivalent list for the current decade?
Australia has been a democratic innovator and most reforms include expanding universities, creating probably the world's best National Health scheme.
Significantly reducing tariffs without causing large scale unemployment. In recent decades politicians have been well behind public opinion. On issues such as same sex marriage, effective action on climate change, transition to a post carbon economy.
Protecting the Great Barrier Reef and other heritage sites, voluntary assisted dying, ending live animal exports a rational and compassionate approach to refugees.
And the Republic, Political parties are now fearful of antagonising vested, interests and being wedged.
Gareth Evans, points out that so many of these what he calls, decency issues, and it's odd, and galling, that leaders who put a heavy emphasis on their religion.
Are supported by happy clappers, are strikingly lacking in compassion and regard cruelty to refugees, for example, as a vote winner.
In his book, the Frontiers of Knowledge, the English philosopher A.C. Grayling wrote Higher Education has undergone a remarkable reversion. It's gone from having general literacy as its goal, leaving special expertise to form itself later.
As the outcome of individual interest and experience to inculcating special expertise at its goal. Leaving general literacy to form itself later as the outcome with individual interests.
The reversal occurred without a halfway house like a switch being thrown. I take up the vice-chancellors point, I'm very glad to see that, that's not exactly the one taken at Victoria University and I welcome that. We now live in an era of anti-leaders where the greatest issue is winning or failing to win the next election. So, politicians are walking on eggshells fearful of offending powerful vested interests.
Incapable of thinking globally or contemplating the long-term future, and 2030 or 2050 seem unimaginably distant. There's a bipartisan failure and the hegemonic parties, both the Coalition and Labor to act courageously on major issues.
Taking effective action on climate change where we're determined to be the last among developed nations. And proud of refusing to plan for a post carbon economy, elevating opinion and feelings over evidence and accountability.
And in government getting the constitution right, pursuing indigenous reconciliation, preserving the environment, adopting humane compassionate policies on refugees.
Tackling gambling and drug dependence, ending misogyny and exploitation of women. The last serious debate in the Australian House of Representatives on science and research was in 1989.
On involvement in war 1991 Arts and Culture, 1995 the republic 1998. On human rights 2001, I shouldn't laugh but you can't help it, foreign policy in 2003 the environment and climate change in 2009.
Neither major party is willing to debate the rationale for progressive taxation. Rational policies on water use, a humane approach to the refugee asylum seeker issue or gambling around the surveillance state, never.
Few Australians recognised that the House of Representatives holds the gold medal for the shortest sittings of any national legislation. It's not surprising, that extended debate becomes impossible it's planned that way.
This is not the result of COVID-19 it's been the case since 1901. But I can't help feeling uneasy when fears about COVID have been used as justification for Parliament's not sitting at all.
While recognising that the option of electronic voting can be available.
As the number of MP's increases, the sitting hours decrease. So, Japan sits on average, it's legislation 150 days.
United Kingdom somewhere around 150, Canada 127,
US around 130, Germany 104, New Zealand 93, Australia 67.
All governments regard parliamentary sittings as nuisance, taking ministers away from what they regard as their core business.
They're particularly irritated by question time, which has become, a theatre of the absurd.
Not a genuine search for information, in which personal attacks gaps or gotcha moments are scored like a sporting event.
The words truth, accountability, courage, debate, analysis, critical thinking, compassion, vision and global, have disappeared from a political lexicon.
Only an active citizenry can prevent sliding towards authoritarian or populous democracy with endless appeals to short term and self-interest.
There are eight problem areas that I want to talk about briefly.
First is the climate change paralysis, this is by far the biggest problem and the biggest failure. The consequences of the two-degree increase in GMST, there's global mean surface temperature before 2040 would be at least an order of magnitude more catastrophic than COVID-19.
The issue has poisoned our politics for more than a decade. Climate change is the most egregious example of an important policy having been hijacked.
By vested interests, promoting the expansion of the fossil fuel industry, whatever the environmental costs.
Neither major party will mention the C word coal, or acknowledge the central problem that each tonne of coal that we burn produces 3.67 tons of CO2.
Which accumulates in the atmosphere for decades, perhaps longer, Australia ranks with Brazil and Saudi Arabia as a climate change, prevaricator or denialist.
The Coalition is bad on this issue Labor only feeble, vested interests have captured the Coalition and Labor is fearful of offending workers in coal mining seats.
Get up, claims to have 1 million followers and asked for strong action on climate change.
Gina Rinehart is passionately opposed.
Who has the greater influence?
It's embarrassing even to ask.
Politics always trumps the science the National Party insists that reducing greenhouse gases including methane, would be disastrous for farming. But the National Farmers Federation says we're already doing it.
Major energy generators proposed to phase out or close down coal fired power stations that Angus Taylor says no, you can't do it.
Banks, superannuation funds or insurers are making lending or investment decisions based on climate change risks that elements in government insist no, you mustn't.
Oddly state governments both Coalition and ALP have been far more courageous than the commonwealth in setting climate change targets.
Number two, the impact of social media.
In my book Sleepers Wake Technology and The Future of Work, published in 1982, I predicted pretty accurately the impact of the information revolution. And development in the post-industrial society, however,
I made four false assumptions.
First that the expansion of tertiary education will raise the quality of political debate with higher levels of political engagement.
Second, that we would embrace the universe.
Third that there'd be more emphasis on the long term and the adoption of scientific methods. The IT revolution and practice has put exaggerated emphasis on the personal, local and short term.
The fragmentation of knowledge, life being experienced through the screen choosing one's own reality, conspiracy theories on tap, preferencing opinion over evidence.
Social media has become the predominant source of news and information for most Australians and Americans.
In practice, it become an echo chamber and a vector of misinformation.
It's highly democratic in a sense, because it rejects the concept of hierarchies in information. Insisting the choosing truth of the matter of personal opinion and the expert opinion in practice involves elites rejecting the laypersons right of free choice.
Feeling is more important than evidence. The subjective overrides the objective.
The controversy about vaccines for COVID-19 is a disturbing illustration of this and trolling is toxic and destructive.
The third issue is the ECI, the Economic Complexity Index problem.
As Donald Horne argue in The Lucky Country back in 1964, and I followed along with Sleepers Wake.
Although Australia is one of the world's most urbanised countries, with two thirds of the population in just five cities. Mediocre political leadership still sees this essentially as a quarry or a farm.
Depending on high volume exports and ignoring high value added complex products. Harvard University's economic complexity index ranked Australia as number 55 in 1995 falling to number 86 in 2019. In those years South Korea has gone from 21 to 4, Singapore from 20 to 5, China from 46 to 16, India 60 to 43. While Japan was number one in both years, New Zealand's on 49, Australia's position was not an accident it's a matter of choice.
Our refusal to transition to a post-carbon economy. However, the good news for Australia is we're still well ahead of Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea.
The fourth problem, corruption, vindictiveness and lack of accountability, failure, incompetence or corruption is shrugged off. Commonwealth ministers are never held to account and this is now regarded as normality.
The ability to count on numbers for a coup or counter coup becomes a decisive factor in parliamentary parties. The role of political staffers minders is excluded from scrutiny, lobbyists are seriously corrupting elements in determining public policy and by recruiting from staffers
MPs or Ministers can change outcomes which are concealed as commercial in confidence that have a decisive and unscrutinised role in shaping policies.
And priorities in gambling, liquor mining, water use, forestry, education, health, taxation and defence spending. Enemies are punished and friends rewarded.
Courts tribunals and boards are stacked and grants given to friends without appropriate oversight.
The Auditor general's funding was stripped back at the prospect of a Commonwealth integrity commission is receding.
Fifth, failure to face up to our history, attempts to open up serious debates on our history are attacked this political correctness or cancel culture both imports from the United States.
And propagated on social media and by shock jocks and news core especially indigenous issues poverty, life expectancy, deaths in custody, over representation of prisons, consistent failure.
And dishonesty about race, class and gender. Dismissal of the Uluru statement. The 1901 constitution is obsolete and has never operated as written.
We're the only Western democracy without a bill of rights. When party discipline inside our Parliament is rather North Korean.
Sharp increases in inequality are compounded by education being used as a class sorting device.
And second, lack of commitment to serious taxation reform, seeks rejection of science and enlightenment values.
With the exception of medical, defence and agricultural science.
There's a disturbing lack of curiosity about a knowledge of science in the political establishment, especially where the long term is involved.
CSIRO, Universities, the Bureau of Meteorology are all under resourced hollowing out of the public service. Public's refused to give government's independent advice, policy analysis and frank and then fearless advice.
Now public servants are instructed to do as they are told, expertise has been hollowed out and advice largely comes from two sources management consultants.
Chosen on the basis that they will tell government's what they want to hear. And minders essentially low-grade political apparatchiks in ministerial offices, who are exempt from scrutiny by parliamentary committees.
The 8th is to resist fundamentalists and recognise that complex problems demand complex solutions. Religious fundamentalists, both Christian and Islamic seem to offer cheap grace, a superficial transaction, promising lifelong, even post life guarantees.
Just like buying a commercial product such as life insurance.
Questioning individuals, questioning individual judgment or knowledge is not required and may be actively discouraged.
Fundamentalism is not merely intellectually crippling, is profoundly contemptuous of Jesus or Muhammad.
His teachings are far more profound, universal, stimulating, controversial and compassionate.
Fundamentals will concede, fundamentals offer a creed without history, without scholarship, without depth, without context. And yet this phenomenal growth, confirms that it meets community needs and anxieties far more than mainstream Churches or Mosques.
Solving the problems the way ahead.
Despite the magnitude of the problems, I'm confident that there are solutions. There are 10 priorities for our time with the survival next century without irreversible damage to the biosphere.
At our social and political institutions, first strong action on climate change transition to a post carbon economy.
Second challenge major parties to block open democratic practices come clean on
funding, expose the role of lobbyists restore trust in public institutions. If major parties fail to respond, then citizens will have to create alternatives.
Third, reject the Nixon strategy of winning elections by promoting divisions, exclusion versus inclusion cultivating the base. Persuading economic victims to blame those below them – race, refugees, exploit the condescension factor and promote resentment of expert opinion winner takes all.
And the fourth making a personal commitment to strength of liberal democracy recognising the threat posed by the rise of populist authoritarian leaders.
Fifth protecting the right to be informed at a central tenet of democracy. Preserving the ABC and investigative reporting, recognising the importance of a free press and so on.
Recognising inequality is not just a social by product of the economic system.
Survival of the fittest, but a political artifact, not an accident with billions of decisions about taxation, education and health.
Thomas Piketty, the French economist is right, Andrew Lee the member for Farrer in the House of Representatives is also working in this area. We've got to insist that the goal of education must be to enable people to fulfil human potential for the whole of life.
Not just to train pupils to be consumers and producers of the contemporary economy.
The syllabus should include some political science philosophy, the humanities the art of exposure to comparative religion.
With encouragement of speculative thought, imagination, creativity, aesthetics, historical perspective.
We have to reject all forms of racism, have to give high priority to the Uluru statement, take stronger action on closing the gap.
As I said earlier, resist fundamentalism, rethink the nature of freedom, recognise the moral basis of progressive taxation and not reprieve from it.
Oddly, the biggest problem of all climate change in reality could be tackled if we encouraged far higher levels of community engagement.
If you take the number of Australians who lived the experience of climate change from direct observation.
Farmers, gardeners, vignerons, bird watchers, bushwalkers, firefighters, anglers, skiers, beekeepers, photographers, aviators, they amount to millions, but they're disengaged.
Their expertise should have been harnessed, which was not to assure that powerful mitigation measures were adopted.
Instead of hand wringing they must engage, engage, engage, and as Ross Garnaut, has argued, we should not fear transition to a post carbon economy. We have the potential to be a superpower in that area. If 1000 citizens of each of the 151 federal electoral divisions can be persuaded to join the political party they normally vote for.
Play an active, principled and uninformed role, and fight existing factual systems in place.
This will only involve 1% of all voters that would be a political revolution.
We must always take the long view psychologically we instinctively react to immediate threats or opportunities.
Our species beat the Neanderthals because our responses were presumably quicker. But then modern humans began planning ahead for the next season planted crops, and were no longer exclusively hunters, gatherers or grazers.
The year 2030 had some good plans for now. And we must work towards a global network to forestall the potential disaster of 2050.
Global emissions must be cut by 7.6% for each year of this decade.
The greatest challenge of all is to enable humanity to achieve its full potential, not just as consumers and to preserve our home the planet.
But to understand what we're capable of it is, I suspect, not an accident that the study of humanities of universities has been singled out for discrimination.
By sharply increasing charges and in a sector already damaged by COVID-19 and the withdrawal of overseas fee-paying students.
We must resist the smug and dangerous implication. Who needs philosophers, historians, political scientists, psychologists, journalists, critics, anthropologists, archaeologists, writers, musicians.
And creative artists, just because they can throw light on the human condition and help us to find out who we are.
We cannot be part time humans. The huge task of exploring human potential has never been taken seriously, nor has the equally huge task of meeting human needs.
It's about time we've found out.
Professor Adam Shoemaker
Colleagues, we have just heard narration which is no ordinary speech.
I think Barry it's fair to say that is an excoriating and magisterial critique of the fragility of the public policy but far more than that, it's a true honour.
To have been present, even digitally present, and of course, watching the responses amongst the audience.
We want many more people to be digitally aware and to hear and see this talk which is being recorded.
And of course, we will pursue that. But may I just say, three quick things before passing to Jean.
One is that I do believe along with you that values-based leadership is far more likely to solve the challenges, whether they be violence against women and children.
Or of protecting country or planetary health or many others and it is a mark of signal pride.
That Victoria University has the state, which holds the name of the state of Victoria.
And that state, is the only state where the vaccination rate for indigenous people exceeds the national average for those who are non-indigenous.
I mean, that shows it's a matter of choice and things can be done.
That's an example I want to just give two or three other quick examples in higher education of where things have been done and can be done.
For example, at ANU, the long-standing Centre for Arab Islamic Studies is one of the few areas in the nation which under the leadership of professors I mean cycle for so many years was maintaining connections.
With Iran and Afghanistan and we have just recently seen what a tragedy has ensued in that regard.
Previously, I had the pleasure of being on the staff at Southern Cross University, which itself had the longest and strongest relationship with Papua New Guinea and here at VU and this is so pertinent to Jean.
The longest and strongest relationship in very many ways with Timor Leste.
And that connects your speech, her life, her achievements and exactly what you said.
It is time to make choices and not just at the ballot box.
Thank you very much Barry for, again, a scintillating talk one which we won't forget.
And it'd be my absolute pleasure to ask Jean herself to say a few words.
I think it's coming soon and I can hear Jean's voice so there's no rush Jean.
We've waited this many years for this Oration and here it is, thanks for your response.
The Honourable Jean McLean AM
Thank you [LAUGH] Thank you very much Adam.
I would also like to pay my respects to Elders past and present and extend my respect to the Aboriginal community who are present today.
It is an absolute honour for the Victoria University to extend this Oration for me.
And I feel that Barry's speech covered everything possible that needs to be covered at the moment with our democracy in tatters.
We've managed with our present Prime Minister to absolutely skip anything humane or decent about our refugees.
He has a little boat on his desk, saying I pushed them away and they drowned and that's all very good.
We don't allow them, we've locked refugees up for eight years who have a right to be extended their freedom.
And we've made an extra million refugees thanks to our involvement in Afghanistan and even if ours was it a little involvement.
It was a very prestigious way as far as the Americans were concerned.
And so we have made a big effort to so just ignore the bombing of a country that they had absolutely nothing to do with.
Do with flying airplanes I mean, they're a people and we ignore that.
And what's interesting too, is that after 20 years when we joined in a slaughter and tripling or maiming and murdering people in Afghanistan.
We climbed up on the roof at the airport.
And did the same thing that happened in Vietnam because what we always seem to ignore is that Americans might want to change the country they attack but the people who live in them want their countries free.
To be free of invaders, but now America just says oh well, we've been here for 20 years, we'll climb on the roof like we did in Vietnam.
People forget about it, will start telling people how everybody, all the women were going just to university.
We changed the life of the Afghani people. And now we've been driven out by these terrible, well I mean they're not very good, but [LAUGH] at least they're Afghanis.
And the Afghanistani people can be very pleased that the Americans have gone, even though they've now got another horror that we invented.
Osama Bin Laden was trained by the US and on it goes.
I also would just quickly like to mention a thing that worries me very much.
And that is the secret spy powers that our government has given itself and enormous surveillance and the ability to break into anybody's online.
They modify the data and take over their accounts and knock off your money whatever Mr. Dutton pleases to do.
So, I think we're in a very, very dangerous edge in our democracy.
And Barry's right to describe it like that and maybe people will think it's a bit strange that I would, therefore, with everything Barry said, ask people to join a political path, a political party, I'm sorry.
Because the only way that we can change what's happening is if we change the parties.
And Barry Jones and Steve Bracks and I, amongst many others, know that you can affect the political party you're in if you make enough effort.
You've got to get other people to join because if we don't do that, we've just handed over to the people who are destroying our education system or doing their best.
And creating a very terrifying society where we've got 8 million refugees wandering the world trying to find a place to live.
And there is a place for them, they have as much right as the rest of us, but we've got to assist and not condemn.
So, I'd just very much again like to say thank you for this evening.
I think it will be the start of a new activity through the Victoria University, and following a lot of what Barry had to say to that.
So thank you very much.
Professor Adam Shoemaker
Vice-Chancellor, Victoria University
Jean very, personally and on behalf of the nearly 300 people who have been present online tonight, your words are inspiring as Barry's were challenging and both together couldn't have been stronger.
And we look forward not only to your continued engagement with the university but also as an Honorary Fellow of Victoria University.
And that's just something which has recently been announced in the last couple of days and I wanted to share with everyone here present tonight.
It is the case that we believe that we are a public purpose taxpayer endowed university with a real mission.
And it's one we don't forget.
And we thank you both for reminding us of it.
We really look forward to both of you being part of the VU community for many years to come.
But most importantly, our sincere gratitude for reminding us of the value of public discourse in public places for public purposes and we can't wait to see that happen again.
Colleagues and friends, thank you very much for being present tonight.
Take care of each other, and we'll see you next time.
Thank you again.
Thank you.
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Photos of Jean McLean AM throughout her professional life.
