Here is William Hutt describing the Apartheid practice of ‘job reservation’ (be sure to note the sarcasm).
In harmony with the spirit of the ‘group areas’ policy has been the incorporation of overt job reservation’ into the Industrial Conciliation Act by amendments introduced in 1956 and 1959. This step has rendered more specific and deliberate the exclusions which had previously been stealthily achieved through the standard rate principle since the inception of the Act in 1924 and quite honestly through the Mines and Works Act of 1926 and the Native Building Workers’ Act of 1951. It has tended to determine the broad occupational structure of society by authority instead of the market, and on a racial basis instead of by trainable ability.
…
Under the Act, the Minister of Labour is given power to act in the interests of all employees, irrespective of their race or colour, to defend them from inter-racial competition. How obviously just and fair such arbitrary powers can always be represented to be! But the Minister is in fact authorised to reserve defined types of work for particular races alone; that is, he may forbid that any specified kind of job shall be performed by people of any specified race, or enact that it shall be reserved for a particular race. Within the discriminatory determinations so enacted, even the numbers of the various race groups who may be employed can be dictated by him.
Here is Universities Australia with a new proposal.
The Framework is formed around five key Guiding Principles:
- Indigenous people should be actively involved in university governance and management
- All graduates of Australian universities will have the knowledge and skills necessary to interact in a culturally competent way with Indigenous communities.
- University research will be conducted in a culturally competent way in partnership with Indigenous participants
- Indigenous staffing will be increased at all appointment levels and, for academic staff, across a wider variety of academic fields
- Universities will operate in partnership with their Indigenous communities and will help disseminate culturally competent practices to the wider community
These Guiding Principles provide the higher education sector with a framework for embedding Indigenous cultural competencies within and across the institution in sustainable ways which engender reconciliation and social justice by enabling the factors that contribute to social, economic and political change.
Greg Melleuish critiques the proposal in The Australian.
UNIVERSITIES are unusual institutions. They engage in several types of activity ranging from teaching students to maintaining traditions of scholarship to the creation of new knowledge.
But if there is anything that is central to all these activities it is the practice of criticism. Students learn by criticising established ideas, just as knowledge advances by subjecting what is known to rigorous analysis.
There are those, of course, who would use the universities for purposes other than criticism. They believe universities can be used for purposes of social engineering, to create a certain type of person, hence “a better world”. Academics are prone to forgetting that their basic role is scholarly and educational, not political. As Stanley Fish put it a few years ago, they “should save the world in their own time”.
Andrew Bolt has more here.
They are a deeply depressing attack on our humanist tradition of valuing people as individuals, and they are also one more sign that our even more critical traditions for free speech and free inquiry are being sabotaged – and by the very institutions who should be defending them most.
Race based social engineering is becoming a serious challenge as it is particularly seductive and subversive. Those who want to come to terms with this problem should consider reading William Hutt, Walter Williams’ South Africa’s War against Capitalism, and for a local discussion Keith Windschuttle’s The White Australia Policy.
Update: Kim at LP is onto that extremist right-wing culture warrior Andrew Norton.
Like any business that loses focus on their goal, their competition will kill them.
What is the true core goal of universities? Education or Social Re-engineering?
Don’t they realise what they are going to do to the overseas student market?
Token
17 Jan 12 at 10:00 am
Appointment by race not merit. This is a quota system by race instead of gender.
Gab
17 Jan 12 at 10:09 am
Universites are already largely following those five principles, though I guess this is formalising it and expanding it. It is already common to have some kind of compulsory unit of aboriginal studies in many design degrees, arts/visual arts degrees and journalism degrees. They’ve got to employ all those ‘aboriginal’ academics somehow.
I’m sick of Australia prostrating itself in front of a stone age people.
Andreas
17 Jan 12 at 10:29 am
Andreas:
That’s really pretty offensive. Don’t blame the people going for these jobs, blame the institution and the state opening these doors.
That’s where I think Bolt was essentially wrong in his criticisms. He should have attacked the institutions that create those opportunities to exploit, not the people themselves, as all they are doing is responding to rotten incentives (shocking to libertarians). Having said that it was appalling the lawsuit was successful but that is another story.
JC
17 Jan 12 at 10:39 am
“Don’t they realise what they are going to do to the overseas student market?”
No they don’t Token. Their eyes are fixed, totally, on the the glittering Radiant Future that beckons brightly from the hill.
They are blind to the ideological cesspit that awaits them in their headlong rush toward the light.
Winston Smith
17 Jan 12 at 10:41 am
“Universites are already largely following those five principles, though I guess this is formalising it and expanding it”
No they arn’t. You couldn’t even fill of the roles given that there only 30K Aborigines in Victoria (and essentially none in Tasmania).
conrad
17 Jan 12 at 10:42 am
JC, is what you are saying the equivalent of someone stealing a wallet because it was within easy reach? Surely individuals should have more moral responsibility than that.
Biota
17 Jan 12 at 10:43 am
Not at all Biota.
I’m saying that people respond to incentives. There’s no point in blaming people for being self interested if there is a legal loophole to exploit. We know the consequences.
The incentives were created by the semi government institutions (universities) to exploit these deranged opportunities.
JC
17 Jan 12 at 10:47 am
OTH, I have a friend who has undoubted and recent aboriginal lineage. They are fully aware of all the lurks available to them and won’t touch them. They choose to work for a living like the rest of us.
Biota
17 Jan 12 at 11:24 am
The argument for all this is that there exists racism toward Aboriginals that should be compensated for in some way (in practice, via reverse racism). People who genuinely discriminate against aboriginals must know that their victims are aboriginal, presumably by their appearance. Thus Bolt was correct to highlight a clearly absurd outcome, in which superficially caucasian people were on the recieving end of rewards intended for people who are discriminated against for being superficially aboriginal. The trouble is, only these individuals would know if they were intentionally ‘stealing a wallet’, which is why it’s surprising to me that they didn’t sue Bolt for defamation. That he was done for racial vilification is as absurd as these people recieving the grants in the first place.
Greego
17 Jan 12 at 11:29 am
Biota…
My point is that if you don’t want rorting, stop the fucking potential for rorts.
If there weren’t those opportunities available those wihtes would not be going for the carrots.
It’s far easier to attack those rancid institutions that provided the rorts then the people responding to them. We know what people do when there are incentives.
JC
17 Jan 12 at 11:35 am
I would be happy to see indigenous culture embedded into Australian universities if by indigenous you mean the good stuff that Noel Pearson and other like him and promoting and not all the other crap that is around.
johno
17 Jan 12 at 11:36 am
JC – I get what you’re saying but I think you’ll find that many of these ‘Aboriginal’ academics where the ones who pushed for all this special treatment and reverse racism in the fist place. They’ve feathered their own nests nicely, and I think it’s fair that they cop some criticism for it, though as Bolt vs. White Nine showed us, they are protected from direct criticism by law.
Bolt’s got some balls I must admit, writing on this topic again. I guess he’s had legal advice that, as long as he keeps it general and mentions no individual names, he should be OK. I wouldn’t be so sure, the way free speech is heading.
papachango
17 Jan 12 at 11:38 am
JC
Have you been taking nice pills?
Bolt’s latest article is spot on. He does attack the institutions and not the beneficiaries of the latest racist policies. But in truth both are to blame. The institutions are only responding to the whining of the race lobby. Those who react to the incentives are acting immorally. They are not babies. They should be outed and shamed for their vile behaviour just a much as the instituions (of which they are usually members anyway).
Rococo Liberal
17 Jan 12 at 11:38 am
Have you been taking nice pills?
lol just what I was thinking – who is this person and what has he or she done with JC?
Though it’s safer to attack the institiutions than the individuals; if you try to ‘out and shame them for their vile behaviour’, you’ll gtet the pants sued off you.
papachango
17 Jan 12 at 11:41 am
JC, I don’t really blame the people who take those positions, I was just cynically noting a neat coincidence that universities want to employ more indigenous people and also want to increase awareness of aboriginal issues (“to impart the knowledge and skills necessary to interact in a culturally competent way with Indigenous communities” to use the bullshit). What better way to do that than proliferate compulsory units in some variant of aboriginal studies. Obviously the people teaching such courses think they are doing good, as do the universities. But mostly these compulsory courses are of dubious benefit to students, are not rigorous, and do not encourage close critical inspection of aboriginal culture – they are a feel-good or propaganda exercise only.
Andreas
17 Jan 12 at 11:43 am
I did an undergrad engineering degree (with a couple of Arts units) at Melbourne Uni in the early ninties, and an MBA at Deakin in the early noughties.
At melb, there was a noisy on-campus activist group, but officially, not one iota of Aboriginal stuff anywhere, I don’t even recall any welcome to country ceremonies, and certainly nothing in any of my subjects.
When did all this stuff start getting trendy?
papachango
17 Jan 12 at 12:16 pm
“Have you been taking nice pills?”
Of course not, RL. In fact it’s really offensive to be categorizing me as “nice”
JC
17 Jan 12 at 12:24 pm
Look, the point I’m making is dish out rotten incentives and you end up with rotten results.
JC
17 Jan 12 at 12:24 pm
hmmm… the Bolt blog post appears to have been pulled. His lawyers are back from leave?
papachango
17 Jan 12 at 12:26 pm
“What better way to do that than proliferate compulsory units in some variant of aboriginal studies.”
Andreas, can you name one university with these compulsory units?
conrad
17 Jan 12 at 12:28 pm
I’m wondering how critical one might be allowed to be of the ‘aboriginal studies’ presented at universities in this politically correct manner.
Read what Watkyn Tench, a First Fleet Lieutenant, reports in his diaries (Sydney’s First Four Years) about the condition of aboriginal women’s heads, nearly all showing clear scars and fractures from long-term massive traumas inflicted with cultural sanctioning by their menfolk. Know too that archaological studies of skeletal remains show that this was a condition suffered by many Mesolithic and some Neolithic females.
In Australia, stone age technologies and long-term isolation from the rest of the world as it developed produced an undoubtedly complex and interesting but still essentially savage society. I doubt if the contemporary ‘noble savage’ version will be truthful about this.
If by ‘aboriginal culture’ the universities mean the social memes of a ‘culture of poverty’(as identified by anthropologists in indigenous culture contact and culture loss world-wide) and add to these some often invented or bowdlerised orally
transmitted ‘traditions’ (along with some edited real ones), then that is all well and good for students of health and welfare to understand in order to operate effectively in concert with the current belief systems of indigenous populations.
Nothing wrong with a bit of cultural give and take in these disciplinary areas to foster good relationships even if it is poor anthropology. Other savage indigenous cultures such as the Maori have been successful in highlighting positive aspects of their ways and ignoring the less lovely ones, such as canibalism. And all cultures have their historical bad habits – the classic example being the Vicious Vikings (currently under review).
However, for students in other than health and welfare disciplinary areas, a romanticised and unsubstantiated version of such things as pre-contact ‘aboriginal thought’, for example in physics or computing or engineering, via some sort of imputed stargazing, numbering system or fish pond construction etcetera, is unlikely to contribute much, and will be quickly dismissed for the tokenism that it is. It will harm rather than progress the aboriginal cause.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
17 Jan 12 at 12:31 pm
It’s still there, Papa, just been pushed further back down the blog.
Gab
17 Jan 12 at 12:33 pm
The Bolt piece has been pulled – the earlier piece is from yesterday.
Sinclair Davidson
17 Jan 12 at 12:37 pm
Gab – there’s a blog post from yesterday about the same topic, but the one linked to above has disappeared totally. Clicking on the link yields HTTP 404 File not Found
He must have had a panicked lawyer…
papachango
17 Jan 12 at 12:40 pm
You’re right. Sorry about that. I looked at the heading but didn’t click on the link.
Gab
17 Jan 12 at 12:42 pm
Bachelor of Digital Media (Griffith) requires unit on
“Indigenous Art Issues, protocols and Practice”
hzhousewife
17 Jan 12 at 12:42 pm
@ Lizzie – it would actually be fascinating to study Aboriginal culture on a ‘warts and all’ basis, without all the politically correct, new-Age spiritualist mumbo jumbo. There’s be some good things and some bad things, as you identify above.
Unfortunately, with the current state of ‘Aboriginal studies’ academia, it’s not really possible. Geoffrey Blainey’s book The Triumph of the Nomad, written about 20 years ago, came pretty close to telling it like it was, but he got hounded out of melbourne Uni for not having the ‘correct’ interpretation.
papachango
17 Jan 12 at 12:48 pm
“Andreas, can you name one university with these compulsory units?”
Unisa is one example – they have for some time had compulsory units in many of their degrees – journalism, arts, design, international studies, environmental science, and probably other degrees. Obviously it’s going to be much harder if not impossible to include it in things like engineering or commerce.
Andreas
17 Jan 12 at 12:55 pm
“Bachelor of Digital Media (Griffith) requires unit on
“Indigenous Art Issues, protocols and Practice””
WTF?
I guess it’s getting expertise about sticking warning labels that something about to be shown has a dead person in it that could offend the Islanders at the Top End.
JC
17 Jan 12 at 1:03 pm
For a condensed version of Hutt’s book on the origin and evolution of apartheid in South Africa.
http://www.the-rathouse.com/Revivalist4/WH_ColourBar.html
And more on Hutt. Who needs Wikopedia:)
http://www.the-rathouse.com/Revivalist4/WHHutt.html
Rafe
17 Jan 12 at 1:04 pm
“Indigenous Art Issues, protocols and Practice”
Thanks — Not that I know anything about the course, but it doesn’t exactly seem out of place there, and it’s not quite the sort of thing I was looking for (e.g., Something, say, engineering students are forced to), although personally I think it would be better off as an elective (but then, they may simply not have enough subjects to offer electives, so this may just be a practical decision). Personally, I imagine if I was doing Arty-stuff, Aboriginal art might be quite interesting and it would certainly differentiate the course from others.
As it happens, I used to work at MQ in the faculty that had an Aboriginal studies group (albeit a very long time ago), and it still wasn’t compulsary there even for students in that faculty, so I’m yet to believe people are being forced to do the sort of stuff that Andreas is suggesting on any large scale. I certainly wasn’t in my degree (mathematics and computing), and no-one is at my university, nor any others I can think of off hand (mainly in Vic).
conrad
17 Jan 12 at 1:08 pm
Papachango is correct, Gab. Bolt’s post has been pulled.
Academics who push this line of “an Aboriginal perspective” are cultural relativists.
In a way JC is right. The only way for Andrew Bolt to make any progress is to start by taking an initial shot at the underlying assumptions of these relativists.
ella
17 Jan 12 at 1:17 pm
When I did engineering at Newcastle Uni every student had to do an ‘ethics in engineering’ subject which was essentially a year-long course in soft-left/enviro feel-good bullshit taught by some cranky old greenie. From memory it didn’t include any appreciation of Aboriginal art though. That said I finished my degree a decade ago so who knows what they make the kiddies do nowadays.
Greego
17 Jan 12 at 2:30 pm
I’m sure that those Australians who lost grandparents in the Japanese P.O.W. camps during WWII can’t wait to interact with the Japanese “in a culturally competent manner.”
The problem with Australian soldiers during WWII is that they had no cultural competency training. They were ethnocentric. They believed that lopping the heads off P.O.W’s was wrong.
If only they understood that the truth was relative.
ella
17 Jan 12 at 2:43 pm
Greego – nothing of that sort doing an engie degree at Melb uni in the early 90s. then again they’re seen as a ‘right wing’ uni, what with them going to the Amreican model of graduate degrees.
There was, however, a subject with the rather amusing title of ‘English Expression for Engineers’. I’m not sure if it was targetted at the semi-literate flanelette shirt-wearing locals, or the international students with limited English.
papachango
17 Jan 12 at 2:55 pm
Jeez, it’s annoying when Bolt’s posts get pulled without notice or explanation like that. What the hell is goping on over there?
spot
18 Jan 12 at 2:20 am
“goping” = “going”, obviously. Too much GOPing with the SCdebates last night…
spot
18 Jan 12 at 2:21 am
Jesus JC, did somebody switch your blood-pressure meds for ecstasy tablets? Next you’ll be demanding group hugs.
Peter Patton
19 Jan 12 at 2:53 pm
lol
No.. it must have been a weak moment. A temporary brain spasm.
JC
19 Jan 12 at 2:56 pm
Lizzie
In the case of Tasmania there is a lot of evidence that they regressed from the stone age!
Peter Patton
19 Jan 12 at 2:59 pm
There is already far, far too much “Indigenous” 12 Step Program stuff in our education system. In NSW, it has figured prominently – and compulsorily – in the curriculum from Kindergarten to Year 12 for at least a decade now. The new National Curriculum is smothered in it. It is the Aborigines who need training in “cultural competencies”; you know – Arithmetic, reading, history, science, let alone Greek poetry, Latin, molecular biology, statistics, Accounting, Shakespeare, and stuff.
Peter Patton
19 Jan 12 at 3:11 pm
Faaaaarrrrkkkk! The Dawkins Universities are already knee-deep in this shit.
http://www.unisa.edu.au/ducier/icup/default.asp
Peter Patton
19 Jan 12 at 3:41 pm
Peter Patton
19 Jan 12 at 3:43 pm
Patton
You mentioned recently that NSW science curriculum has a section dedicated to Aboriginal science. Was that correct?
JC
19 Jan 12 at 3:44 pm
Peter Patton
19 Jan 12 at 3:45 pm
Voila!
.
http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_sc/pdf_doc/science-syllabus-7-10.pdf
Peter Patton
19 Jan 12 at 3:52 pm
I’ve seen Deans from sandstones do that to them. They don’t need help from the black armband history society.
.
19 Jan 12 at 4:01 pm
They could really make some of this indigenous studies stuff quite interesting:
“They (the Narrinyeri tribe) bore a special enmity to the Merkani (tribe) because these latter had a propensity for stealing fat people and eating them. If a man had a fat wife, he was always particularly careful not to leave her unprotected lest she might be seized by prowling cannibals.” – ‘The Native Tribes of SA’, 1879
Andreas
19 Jan 12 at 4:32 pm
One aspect of their culture I find interesting is the amount of time devoted to sorcery and ‘payback’. It is estimated they needed less than 25 hours per week to hunt and gather all the food they needed. That’s a lot of spare time to devote to whoo.
Peter Patton
19 Jan 12 at 4:36 pm
Rather than teach the Aborigines about Science, the CSIRO believes scientists must learn about ‘smoking ceremonies’.
CSIRO’s Indigenous Engagement Protocol for performing a ‘Welcome to Country’ and ‘Acknowledgement of Country’
3.3. Smoking Ceremony
The ceremony aims to cleanse the space (of evil spirits) in which the ceremony takes place and to cleanse the participants, who are asked to take in the smoke that comes from the earth to protect them on that Country. Smoking ceremonies are conducted by Aboriginal people with specific cultural knowledge, i.e. what to burn – wood fungus, leaves, words to say and songs to sing.
People are encouraged to walk through the smoke to cleanse their spirits.
Given the significant nature of the ceremony, smoking ceremonies are usually performed at major events.
Aboriginal people may request a smoking ceremony to cleanse a new work place that is opened, where culturally significant items are repatriated to Country, or where it is believed bad spirits exist.
http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Publications/Brochures–Fact-Sheets/~/media/CSIROau/Corporate%20Units/Corporate%20Communications/OIEWelcomeToCountryProtocol_OIE_PDF%20Standard.pdf
Peter Patton
19 Jan 12 at 5:02 pm