Why is anti-Australian sentiment so rampant?

Globalisation is over. National unity is back on the agenda. 

One of the consequences of the recent polarisation of Australian politics is the loss of the middle ground that has traditionally held Australian society together. The trend in Australia tends to replicate the experience of liberal democracies elsewhere. But why is this happening? Are people really so fed up with living in liberal democracies that they wish to be part of their own undoing? The problem stems from the habitual use of our individual freedom to say whatever we like about politics as a safety valve. It got us through the pandemic, but in light of the changing nature of geopolitics, it has become a bad habit that we now take for granted to our own detriment.

For generations, human society has succumbed to the idea that “it couldn’t happen to us”. Human nature is viewed as having evolved to the point where we, collectively, are somehow immune to the errors of the past. To be sure, technology and the institutions that govern modern society have evolved to support unprecedented populations, but that is still no guarantee of the resilience of the species. Human nature, like the natural world, has a way of reminding us that we do not control external events, nor do we have the ability to be guided entirely by reason.

At the wrong end of the height of Roman society, excesses of leisure and culture turned inward and consumed an empire that would otherwise stand the test of time, albeit with completely different people and in completely different geographies. Stoic philosophy, encapsulated by Marcus Aurelius, the last of Rome’s “good” emperors, became a coping mechanism for individuals unable to comprehend external events amid uncertain and unfamiliar politics. The West may well be in that same situation now.

The Australian experience has been, despite critiques about the general willingness to obey federal and state government mandates, an exercise in supporting the common good, which is a central tenet of liberal democracy. But emerging from the exhaustion following years of obeying government mandates including the wearing of masks and checking in to every public space one visits, the national will is understandably waning. But geopolitics waits for nobody, and if we are not careful, the excesses of exercising our national freedoms may very well be our collective undoing.

It is too easy to ignore the lessons of the past. It is also rather boring to rehash George Santayana. But the past reminds us that we are no further from human nature than the Romans or indeed any other civilisation before us. While it is certainly a truism that Western Civilisation has provided greater freedoms and collective and individual advantages than any other human civilisation to date, it does not mean that it is infallible nor that the people who now live their daily existence as part of that very Western Civilisation will not or do not take its benefits for granted. Which brings me to my point.

We have the forgotten people, the Aussie battlers, the heroic diggers, shearers, and miners of Australian folklore, the original inhabitants and the immigrants who now call Australia home, and then we have the dissidents. The difference is that the dissidents of the past were fighting for a better Australia. The dissidents of the present, in the absence of the overwhelming majority of middle Australia, are perpetuating a view that the Australia we know today is somehow not worthy of our incredible history of liberty checked by responsibility and reform leading to improvement, however gradual and inadequate.

And while the ideal society eludes all humans, Australia has it pretty good. Some millennials may suggest that the previous generation has “stolen” some of their inheritance, but this sentiment is little more than the privilege of not knowing. Anyone who thinks it was easier to own your own home in the 1980s or 1990s simply wasn’t there. Sure, there are unique challenges today, but owning your own home was always something that required determination, focus, and ultimately, hard work. That much has not changed.

But the difference is that earlier generations of Australians were prepared to defend their homes, to defend their way of life, and to defend their liberties. While it is true that every generation from Aristotle and Confucius on down has lamented the inadequacies of youth, the trouble now is not generational, it is endemic among Australians of all ages. It is too convenient to blame the media or politics. They are both, after all, systems that supply people with what they want. 

Australians have experienced war and peace, prosperity and depression, recessions we had to have and circumstances we did not want. We will continue to do so. Modern Stoicism’s recent resurgence suggests that the extent of uncertainty has reached Roman proportions, but it offers little solace to Australians while many of our fellow citizens attack our society from within. Elsewhere, you may well be able to do whatever you like as long as you do not criticise the government. Here, you can criticise the government, but that implies attending to other responsibilities to support that very liberty.

In the current circumstances, attitudes toward our system of government and our political offices provide opportunities for public dissent that do little to improve Australian society while actively undermining it. Middle Australia is more important now than ever in maintaining an even keel as we navigate uneasy geopolitical waters. In the meantime, the forgotten people need to be remembered if they are to once again be called to rescue us from ourselves.

As much as it may seem inconceivable that we are in this geopolitical situation once again, here we are. Our island home can only be breached if we open the gates from within, and rampant anti-Australian sentiment is the enemy that may well do so. Only a reinvigorated “forgotten people” can keep the insidiousness of anti-Australian sentiment at bay if we are to ensure external circumstances do not dictate our destiny.

The Hydrogen Fuel Discussion: What's the Buzz?

Hydrogen Fuel Station Sign [Source: Bexim CC BY-SA 4.0] 

On 7th December 2021, I was invited to join John Poljak of keynumbers to discuss some of the issues around hydrogen fuel and its potential impacts on transport and logistics. There is quite a buzz about hydrogen as a clean and abundant fuel to help to reduce carbon emissions. 

But for the general transport enthusiast, there is not much information available. John and I were invited to the Annual General Meeting of the Victorian Chapter of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILTA) to address some of the 'known knowns' and 'known unknowns' of hydrogen and its policy implications.

John has developed a wonderful discussion tool he calls "Key Numbers" to allow groups to brainstorm and spitball various "what if" scenarios by drawing on relevant data, or the key numbers' of various scenarios. 

John has some twenty years of experience in the offshore energy industry and really knows what he is talking about, especially when it comes to the statistics and presenting these in a digestible way for lay audiences. He is the brains behind the operation of keynumbers and did all of the legwork for our presentation.

We used keynumbers in our presentation to the ACT Chapter of CILTA via MS Teams at the Department of Infrastructure in Canberra on 11th October 2021 entitled Road Pricing and Electric Vehicles: Where to from here? John demonstrated how various fuel efficiencies compared with the Victorian and NSW governments' decisions to adopt a 2.5 cents per kilometre charge for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles compared with the fuel excise which is currently set at 43.3 cents per litre as at August 2021.

A video recording of the presentation is below:

 

The slides we used for the presentation are below. If the recording of the session is available, I will add it to this post at a later date.

The Hydrogen Fuel Discussion from University of Canberra

Background Reading

Australian Renewable Energy Agency: https://arena.gov.au/renewable-energy/hydrogen/.

Bordoff, J. & O’Sullivan, M.L. (2021). Green Upheaval: The New Geopolitics of Energy, Foreign Affairs, January/February.

Department of Industry, Science Energy and Resources. Australia's Long-Term Emissions Reduction Plan: https://www.industry.gov.au/data-and-publications/australias-long-term-emissions-reduction-plan.

Department of Industry, Science Energy and Resources. Growing Australia's hydrogen industry: https://www.industry.gov.au/policies-and-initiatives/growing-australias-hydrogen-industry. 

Hydrogen Fuels Australia: https://www.hydrogenfuelsaustralia.com.au/.

Greber, J. (2021). Reality check for Morrison and Taylor’s golden ticket to net zero. Australian Financial Review, 18 November.

International Energy Agency (2019). The Future of Hydrogen: Seizing today’s opportunities. Report for the government of Japan, June.

Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (2021). Hydrogen Fuel Basics. US Department of Energy.

University of Sydney (2021). What you need to know about hydrogen energy. 22 January.

We must align our university research with Australia’s strategic intent

 

Publish or Perish? (Photo: Whiskey Monday via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Academics often have lofty ideals about passion-driven curiosity in designing research projects. But these ideals are rarely practical. Changing times demand a changing focus in our approach to publicly funded research.

The ‘publish or perish’ metric drives many researchers to trendy topics that have little consequence in terms of Australia’s place in the world. In fact, the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) program has had the opposite effect, with Australian research journals rarely meeting the desired first quartile rankings that are essential for promotion in the academy.

The Prime Minister recently stated that the ‘publish or perish’ metric must give way to the commercialisation imperative. While this may be possible in some disciplines like the industrial sciences, this too is a flawed metric. And the potential for commercialisation in our current public-funded research system is a nightmare of bureaucratic red tape that will take more than good intentions to overcome.

Take the national Science and Research Priorities administered by the Department of Industry as a case in point. Third on the list is transport, which includes policy and other areas that are related to the social rather than the industrial or natural sciences. 

Health is the ninth priority. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that the science is fine. But the social and political issues have caused more problems than the natural sciences can explain in any meaningful way.

To be sure, energy and other policies are underpinned by science, but the practical approaches to deploying the science are beset by politics to ‘satisfice’ rather than deliver the most efficient or effective solution.

To take the national research priorities seriously, universities need to be incentivised to align research centres that establish collaborative networks focused on publishing research not only in the best journals but in Australian journals that are open access and available for anyone to use for free. It is rather strange that publicly funded Australian research outputs are hidden behind a commercial paywall and often in overseas journals.

When I was in Canada in 2007 a Harvard professor suggested that the best way to commercialise research is for companies to hire the best PhD graduates in the relevant field and to pay them to develop the company’s own intellectual property. Partnering with universities is such a barrier to commercialisation that it is hardly worth the effort.

Australia’s track record with commercialising our own competitive advantages leaves much to be desired. Take for instance the native macadamia nut. The US produced the most of this native crop until Australia gained ground up until 2015, only to lose the title to South Africa recently.

Consider also the CSIRO’s development of ‘fast wifi’ technology. Our world-leading research organisation had to fight its way through US courts to claim fees from their 1996 patent. If a government research agency has problems commercialising, what hope have our lumbering universities?

We are entering a stage in our strategic situation that will rely heavily on the higher education system if we are to address the challenges of the future. Our submariners need PhDs in nuclear engineering or physics. We need social and political approaches to effectively deploy scientific solutions. We need a cadre of educators sympathetic to our national priorities. And we need to provide incentives to keep the best educators in the sector.

Changing trade and security relations in the post-pandemic world order stress the importance of commercialising research. But so too is the necessity for language skills in Japanese, Hindi, Chinese, and Indonesian. Australians are notoriously monolingual, and this remains a barrier to commercialisation in the region.

There is scope for passion-driven research and academic freedom, and such ideals do not have to be at odds with the national research priorities. But if we are to ensure our future prosperity and security, commercialisation is one of many approaches to address the end of free market globalisation.

Rather than force all academic disciplines to commercialise, the key to integrating our research outputs is to align universities with our national research priorities. Such research must also prioritise open access publication in Australian journals if the outputs are to be useful.