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Insights from Quadrant
Bitter Harvest
now on sale
now on sale
The highly readable vivisection of author Bruce Pascoe’s compendium of errors, misrepresentations and misquoted sources depicting Aborigines as sedentary agriculturalists with ‘skills superior to those of the white colonisers who took their land and despoiled it’ is available from Quadrant Books.
With the ABC pointedly ignoring any and all critiques of Dark Emu‘s fantasies as it peddles and promotes Pascoe’s shoddy scholarship, Bitter Harvest is essential reading for those who still believe truth matters.
Insights from Quadrant
State of disaster
Writing on the website of the American Institute for Economic Research, Jeffrey A. Tucker laments the lunacy Premier Daniel Andrews is inflicting on the state stupid enough to have made him its Premier, not once but twice.
Melbourne, that glorious city in the state of Victoria in Australia, granted me some of the best travel days of my life during two separate trips, each lasting a full week.
A happy, civilized, highly educated people are here living amidst modern architecture, inspiring bridges, and natural beauty, a place where even the police are kind, and when you ask them for directions they reply with a smile, and when you say thank you, they say “No worries.”
Now there are big worries in Melbourne.
The Premier has imposed a vicious police state without precedent in this country’s history. His name is Dan Andrews (a sweet-sounding name that masks the tyrant he has become), and he tweets out pictures of empty streets to brag about what he has achieved in the name of suppressing a virus.
Tacitus’s line about the Roman empire comes to mind: “Where they make a desert, they call it peace.” ….
Insights from Quadrant
How to revitalise
Australia’s economy
Australia’s economy
Andrew Stone’s important new book lays out an economic agenda that is coherent and comprehensive, yet politically achievable over the next three to five years by a federal government with the resolve to implement it.
Addressing immigration, the housing market, higher education reform, federal‑state relations, energy policy, workforce participation, welfare reform, budget repair, monetary policy and financial system regulation, the book demonstrates that good government worthy of the respect and support of the Australian people is not merely possible but vital.
What others are saying of Restoring Hope:
Niall Ferguson: “This is an ambitious program of structural as well as fiscal reform. Let us hope there are politicians willing to take the risks inherent in such a radical strategy.”
Peter Costello: “Andrew Stone reminds us that improving productivity is the key to future living standards in Australia. He identifies a range of areas where this could be examined. The hard work of economic reform cannot be done without explaining the options and building public support.”
John Howard: “Andrew Stone has undertaken the difficult task of arguing in detail for a range of economic reforms. That he has done it at a time when, in the eyes of some, reform is in the doldrums is all the more praiseworthy. His analysis of the housing issue is impressive.”
Insights from Quadrant
A one-sided Conversation
Friend of Quadrant Les Louis was doing some online slumming and stopped by to inspect the latest pearls at The Conversation, where he found the deep thoughts of Robyn Moore, of the University of Tasmania’s School of Social Sciences, whose research “focuses on examining the enduring nature of race and gender based inequalities” plus “examining constructions of Australianness in Australian history textbooks, the experiences of women of colour in STEMM and girls in action sports.”
That trove of interests would be enough, you might think, to keep an academic beavering happily away at explorations of eurocentrism in education. Redirecting her academic attention from topics such as “Exploring Methodological Challenges of Using Participant-Produced Digital Video Diaries in Antarctica“, Ms Moore somehow found time to gush over the, er, scholarship of fauxboriginal Bruce Pascoe.
Her essay appears beneath the headline “Secondary school textbooks teach our kids the myth that Aboriginal Australians were nomadic hunter-gatherers“.
This was too much for Les, whose attempts to comment were thrice thwarted by The Conversation‘s censors, prompting a note to Quadrant‘s Peter O’Brien, who exposes Pascoe’s misrepresentations in Bitter Harvest (order your copy here), and Tony Thomas, who boasts a sharp eye for cant and nonsense. Les writes:
Would you (as journalists) be interested in joining with me (as a retired associate professor) in a joint approach to all university vice-chancellors to inquire whether they intend to continue contributing to the funding of The Conversation when they will be imposing substantial reductions in expenditure, given that The Conversation imposes censorship that stymies scholarly debate which is the antithesis of the raison d’etre of universities
The rejected comments on Ms Moore’s reverence for Pascoe are below:
A main secondary source for Pascoe is Bill Gammage’s major study, The Biggest Estate on Earth. On how Aborigines made Australia; and the usage is revealing. Pascoe (p.14) reproduces a central theme as formulated by Gammage (p.281):
“People farmed in 1788, but were not farmers. These are not the same…people never depended on farming. Mobility was more important…”
and mobility is repeatedly stressed (eg p. 304) … Pascoe simply employs the material as evidence of agriculture to rewrite a travesty of pre-history. Agriculture is not an entry in Gammage’s comprehensive index”.
His second rejected comment focused on “other ignorant assertions” in The Conversation piece:
The standard text books on the pre-history of Australia were the culmination of many decades of rigorous field work and scholarship by archaeologists and anthropologists of international stature, including John Mulvaney, Isabelle Mc Bryde and Rhys Jones. And in his “The Prehistory of Australia”, Mulvaney is unequivocal,
“They[ Aborigines] practiced neither agriculture nor simpler horticulture as it is conventionally defined and never domesticated any indigenous animals”.
But Pascoe desperately needs some semblance of credibility, so he surreptitiously drops in references to an authority. For example, on pp. 22, 23, he refers to Professor David Frankel, but in his comprehensive study, “Between the Murray and the Sea: Aboriginal Archaeology in South-eastern Australia”, there is no question that Aborigines were other than hunter-gatherers.”
His final attempt at having a conversation with The Conversation:
It is Pascoe who denigrates hunter-gatherers, and this hinders an appreciation of the achievements of Aboriginal hunter-gatherers over such a long time in an old dry continent with limited natural resources. As Geoffrey Blainey in The Triumph of the Nomads (p.225) concludes: a comparison of standards of living in relation to food, health, shelter and warmth, would show that “the average Aboriginal was probably as well off as the average European in 1800”. They certainly had more leisure time. And Stanner reports:
“Their [the Aborigine’s] tools and crafts, meagre — pitiably meagre — though they are, have nonetheless been good enough to let them win the battle for survival, and to win it comfortably at that. With no pottery, no knowledge of metals, no wheel, no domestication of animals, no agriculture, they have still been able to people the entire continent…” (The Dreaming and Other Essays, pp. 234-235).
With the stream of foreign students to our universities all but dried up and unlikely to resume any time soon, those vice-chancellors will have to make some decisions about what and who is to be jettisoned from the ivory tower.
Non-academics might well see some easy choices.
Insights from Quadrant
Bitter Harvest
now on sale
now on sale
The highly readable vivisection of author Bruce Pascoe’s compendium of errors, misrepresentations and misquoted sources depicting Aborigines as sedentary agriculturalists with ‘skills superior to those of the white colonisers who took their land and despoiled it’ is available from Quadrant Books.
With the ABC pointedly ignoring any and all critiques of Dark Emu‘s fantasies as it peddles and promotes Pascoe’s shoddy scholarship, Bitter Harvest is essential reading for those who still believe truth matters.
Insights from Quadrant
State of disaster
Writing on the website of the American Institute for Economic Research, Jeffrey A. Tucker laments the lunacy Premier Daniel Andrews is inflicting on the state stupid enough to have made him its Premier, not once but twice.
Melbourne, that glorious city in the state of Victoria in Australia, granted me some of the best travel days of my life during two separate trips, each lasting a full week.
A happy, civilized, highly educated people are here living amidst modern architecture, inspiring bridges, and natural beauty, a place where even the police are kind, and when you ask them for directions they reply with a smile, and when you say thank you, they say “No worries.”
Now there are big worries in Melbourne.
The Premier has imposed a vicious police state without precedent in this country’s history. His name is Dan Andrews (a sweet-sounding name that masks the tyrant he has become), and he tweets out pictures of empty streets to brag about what he has achieved in the name of suppressing a virus.
Tacitus’s line about the Roman empire comes to mind: “Where they make a desert, they call it peace.” ….
Insights from Quadrant
How to revitalise
Australia’s economy
Australia’s economy
Andrew Stone’s important new book lays out an economic agenda that is coherent and comprehensive, yet politically achievable over the next three to five years by a federal government with the resolve to implement it.
Addressing immigration, the housing market, higher education reform, federal‑state relations, energy policy, workforce participation, welfare reform, budget repair, monetary policy and financial system regulation, the book demonstrates that good government worthy of the respect and support of the Australian people is not merely possible but vital.
What others are saying of Restoring Hope:
Niall Ferguson: “This is an ambitious program of structural as well as fiscal reform. Let us hope there are politicians willing to take the risks inherent in such a radical strategy.”
Peter Costello: “Andrew Stone reminds us that improving productivity is the key to future living standards in Australia. He identifies a range of areas where this could be examined. The hard work of economic reform cannot be done without explaining the options and building public support.”
John Howard: “Andrew Stone has undertaken the difficult task of arguing in detail for a range of economic reforms. That he has done it at a time when, in the eyes of some, reform is in the doldrums is all the more praiseworthy. His analysis of the housing issue is impressive.”
Insights from Quadrant
A one-sided Conversation
Friend of Quadrant Les Louis was doing some online slumming and stopped by to inspect the latest pearls at The Conversation, where he found the deep thoughts of Robyn Moore, of the University of Tasmania’s School of Social Sciences, whose research “focuses on examining the enduring nature of race and gender based inequalities” plus “examining constructions of Australianness in Australian history textbooks, the experiences of women of colour in STEMM and girls in action sports.”
That trove of interests would be enough, you might think, to keep an academic beavering happily away at explorations of eurocentrism in education. Redirecting her academic attention from topics such as “Exploring Methodological Challenges of Using Participant-Produced Digital Video Diaries in Antarctica“, Ms Moore somehow found time to gush over the, er, scholarship of fauxboriginal Bruce Pascoe.
Her essay appears beneath the headline “Secondary school textbooks teach our kids the myth that Aboriginal Australians were nomadic hunter-gatherers“.
This was too much for Les, whose attempts to comment were thrice thwarted by The Conversation‘s censors, prompting a note to Quadrant‘s Peter O’Brien, who exposes Pascoe’s misrepresentations in Bitter Harvest (order your copy here), and Tony Thomas, who boasts a sharp eye for cant and nonsense. Les writes:
Would you (as journalists) be interested in joining with me (as a retired associate professor) in a joint approach to all university vice-chancellors to inquire whether they intend to continue contributing to the funding of The Conversation when they will be imposing substantial reductions in expenditure, given that The Conversation imposes censorship that stymies scholarly debate which is the antithesis of the raison d’etre of universities
The rejected comments on Ms Moore’s reverence for Pascoe are below:
A main secondary source for Pascoe is Bill Gammage’s major study, The Biggest Estate on Earth. On how Aborigines made Australia; and the usage is revealing. Pascoe (p.14) reproduces a central theme as formulated by Gammage (p.281):
“People farmed in 1788, but were not farmers. These are not the same…people never depended on farming. Mobility was more important…”
and mobility is repeatedly stressed (eg p. 304) … Pascoe simply employs the material as evidence of agriculture to rewrite a travesty of pre-history. Agriculture is not an entry in Gammage’s comprehensive index”.
His second rejected comment focused on “other ignorant assertions” in The Conversation piece:
The standard text books on the pre-history of Australia were the culmination of many decades of rigorous field work and scholarship by archaeologists and anthropologists of international stature, including John Mulvaney, Isabelle Mc Bryde and Rhys Jones. And in his “The Prehistory of Australia”, Mulvaney is unequivocal,
“They[ Aborigines] practiced neither agriculture nor simpler horticulture as it is conventionally defined and never domesticated any indigenous animals”.
But Pascoe desperately needs some semblance of credibility, so he surreptitiously drops in references to an authority. For example, on pp. 22, 23, he refers to Professor David Frankel, but in his comprehensive study, “Between the Murray and the Sea: Aboriginal Archaeology in South-eastern Australia”, there is no question that Aborigines were other than hunter-gatherers.”
His final attempt at having a conversation with The Conversation:
It is Pascoe who denigrates hunter-gatherers, and this hinders an appreciation of the achievements of Aboriginal hunter-gatherers over such a long time in an old dry continent with limited natural resources. As Geoffrey Blainey in The Triumph of the Nomads (p.225) concludes: a comparison of standards of living in relation to food, health, shelter and warmth, would show that “the average Aboriginal was probably as well off as the average European in 1800”. They certainly had more leisure time. And Stanner reports:
“Their [the Aborigine’s] tools and crafts, meagre — pitiably meagre — though they are, have nonetheless been good enough to let them win the battle for survival, and to win it comfortably at that. With no pottery, no knowledge of metals, no wheel, no domestication of animals, no agriculture, they have still been able to people the entire continent…” (The Dreaming and Other Essays, pp. 234-235).
With the stream of foreign students to our universities all but dried up and unlikely to resume any time soon, those vice-chancellors will have to make some decisions about what and who is to be jettisoned from the ivory tower.
Non-academics might well see some easy choices.
