The Country Party of WA

Sir: David Barnett’s article “The Missing Voice of the Country Party” (May 2020), focused on federal politics. With my West Australian background and being a son-in-law of the Hon. Arthur Watts CMG, doyen of the Country Party in that state, what has been the party’s fate there?

Arthur was elected MLA in 1935 and retired from Parliament in 1962. He was Leader of the Opposition in 1942 and led the Country Party for twenty years, being Deputy Premier on two occasions, from 1947 to his retirement. No one has reigned longer in Country Party history, and this says something about the esteem in which politicians were held in those days.

The drought in Western Australia in 1911 and 1912 led to the establishment of the Farmers and Settlers Association in 1912. This morphed into the Country Party of Western Australia in 1914, the first in Australia. In a state with a population of under 300,000, about 100,000 were involved with agriculture. The new party took eight seats in a Legislative Assembly of fifty in the 1914 election, with 14 per cent of primary votes out of 95,400 votes cast. Up until the 1933 election the party, in coalition with the liberals, formed the state government. In the 1933 election the liberals became the third party in the Assembly and the Country Party led the opposition. Up until the 1939 election, the party averaged eleven seats in Parliament, with 16 per cent of the primary votes, from an ever-increasing number of voters.

The McLarty–Watts government came to power in the first post-war election of 1947. The McLarty–Watts, and later the Brand–Watts, government effected great changes in the post-war state, many of which were controversial; including the building of the Narrows Bridge and its freeway system, which in the minds of some destroyed Perth’s waterfront, and the Kwinana refinery, a step in its industrialisation. Such projects put the interests of the state, not popularity, to the fore.

Despite all this good work the party’s support declined. Average parliamentary seats went down and from 1939 to 1962 averaged only nine. The party’s support decreased from 16 to 10 per cent. Fewer people were country people. Recent figures show only 30,000 West Australians employed in agriculture, forestry and fisheries these days—an almighty fall from 100,000, when the party was formed, while the state’s population has increased seven-fold. The party, now under the Nationals banner, has only five members in a fifty-nine-seat legislature and commands only 4.5 per cent of the primary vote.

The “missing voice” is also an affliction in West Australian politics. The party has suffered from its failure to concentrate on where its original supporters live, in the country. Country people seem to have been forgotten. Perhaps the term “National Party” doesn’t help. The outback needs a voice.

The halcyon days when politicians were highly respected also seem to have gone. Arthur Watts refused a knighthood on the grounds that he hadn’t enough money to contribute to all the good causes that knights were expected to support! No money in politics in them days, and perhaps a good thing. He was a fine man.

Ewen Tyler
South Yarra, Vic

Guilt culture

Sir: Harry Cummins’s article “Our Epidemic of Self-Reproach and its Costs” (June 2020) attributes elements of our disadvantage to the influence of Christianity. He quotes Salman Rushdie saying that Islam is a “blame culture” whereas Christianity is a “guilt culture”.

Today’s post-Christian culture differs from its ancestral culture in how guilt is deployed. In the past, Christian leaders taught their flocks to search their hearts for personal guilt. This guilt arose because of things individuals did, or failed to do. The goal was to repent, to avoid sin and do better in the future.

Today many people participate in rituals denouncing their ancestors, or the government, or other actors. They reproach people long dead. They decry politicians to whom they are opposed, with claims that the world is watching our actions, and we should be ashamed. If they feel guilty, it is because of what others have done.

Imagine going to confession and saying, “I feel guilty about the indigenous people killed in Queensland in the 1850s.” The priest would rightly say, “Anyone who lived then is in the hands of God. Tell me about your own behaviour.”

Although social structures can promote evil actions, it is rational to accept guilt only for what is in one’s power to make otherwise. Feeling guilty about things one couldn’t influence suggests a poorly formed conscience. Perhaps some explicit teaching about sin and personal responsibility would help.

Michael Cashman
Grange, Qld

Victims of Rape

Sir: I am sorry that Michael Giffin (June 2020) has taken umbrage at my letter (May 2020). It is difficult to give such a complex argument due deference in a short letter and it was the two sentences related to abortion that stood out for me: “Foetal abnormalities are unavoidable. Rape is avoidable.” The key point is that rape is an act of sexual penetration enacted by force and without the consent of the victim. Rape victims are not playing the role of victim. They are victims. Rape is always non-consensual; if intercourse is consensual, quite simply, it is not rape.

Many lies are told about sexual encounters, but this is not, as Michael Giffin implies, confined to women, as the statements of Bill Clinton, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein have shown. 

In Australia, our most trusted institutions have lied and obfuscated about the rape of children, both boys and girls. In the 1990s, Father Kevin O’Donnell raped the two Foster children, then aged five and seven. Priests at St Alipius in Ballarat had almost free rein amongst school children and allegedly lied to their superiors. The Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse found within the Anglican Church there were 1082 complaints of child sexual abuse between 2015 and 2018 and Brisbane’s Bishop Thompson spoke of a decades-long culture of abuse and cover-up. Similarly, Melbourne Archbishop Philip Freier said he was shocked at his church’s “failure to tackle child sex abuse”. 

For these and all other victims, rape was not avoidable.

Jill Fenwick
East Melbourne, Vic

Post-war Architecture

Sir: I’m dismayed by Philip Drew’s letter (June 2020) on my article “When Modernist Britain Fell Down” (May 2020), grumbling that I am unfair to architecture. He gets my discussion back to front. It’s chiefly about some strong novels and films—including High Rise and A Clockwork Orange—which emerged from the rebuilding of post-war Britain. I emphasised how the problems that blighted new council estates were caused by construction companies and local government; and also that Ballard’s portraits of trendy architects are fictional caricatures.

Quadrant readers will recall my articles on Jacques Tati’s film Mon Oncle (June 2014) and Jeffrey Smart’s paintings (July-August 2016), which likewise explored how those two creators used the post-war reconstruction of France and Italy as themes in their work. Modern architecture often figures in visual art, novels and film—think of Fritz Lang’s silent masterpiece Metropolis—and I’ve long been fascinated by how highly creative people seize upon such motifs when weaving artistic works.

Christopher Heathcote
Keilor, Vic

ABC Breaches of Duty

Sir: There can no longer be any excuse for turning a blind eye to the outrageous breaches of their duty by members of the ABC Board, namely “to ensure that the gathering and presentation by the Corporation of news and information is accurate and impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism”. Paul Kelly, in the Australian (June 10, 2020), pointed out that the ABC was engaged in the cultivation of a political culture. What is more, he says, “everybody can see it”.

There could be no worse breach of the duties of the board under the law than to cultivate a political culture. It breaches all three central duties to be accurate, impartial and objective. They should be called to the bar of the Senate to account for these grave breaches of the law.

It is time for the Liberal Party to stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood and bend every spirit to the reform of this undemocratic monstrosity, else risk condemnation as spineless opportunists.

Fred Bennett
Bonner, ACT