NOT THE CONVERSATION JOURNOS WANT

                                                    How academics are killing freelancers           

Thou woldest han oure labour al for noght. The hye god, that al this world hath wrough Seith that the workman worthy is his hyre.

Geoffrey Chaucer:  The Summoner’s Tale.

What fools we journalists are to study the father of English literature and not harken to his ‘little treatise.’  Now we harvest the sowings.

The journos ‘let go’ by the ABC and other media might ponder freelancing along with the 3,000 who’ve lost jobs this decade past. Can they put food in their school kids’ lunchboxes by staying with their trade? Unlikely.

How about that long-promised book?  Possible if you’re M B Turnbull or M L Trump  but the one I’m still hawking is knocking on the doors of deskless offices, unplugged cables dangling from ceilings.

Much of what you now read in the media is unpaid work – and that includes this rant.  My excuse is that Pearls & Irritations is a not-for-profit maintained by people of repute, concerned public discourse is dominated by philistines shouting louder and reasoning less.

Some journos have survived downsizing: The smarties got out before being told, swapping newsrooms for sandstones. Respected names like Michelle Grattan and Peter Manning saw the press was facing a tsunami of change and debt, so headed to the uplands of tertiary education and the safety of stipends.

A few turned from loss to boss.  After leaving the big chair at The Age in 2008, Andrew Jaspan hired sub-editors to clean and sharpen turgid academic papers for an independent non-profit free website. The Conversation was a bold idea that’s thrived, thanks to a claimed 20,000 donors.

Unfortunately Jaspan’s gown-to-town deal is killing the hopes of those who think chasing the story to witness and tell is what our trade once did well. We’re following lamplighters and town criers into extinction.  

Newspapers, the ABC and this website cherry-pick The Conversation’s Creative Commons copy from screen-bound scholars.  

The Conversation is blessing many academics. Rather than being published in some obscure quarterly with a double-digit readership, they can have their work read by thousands.  In the free-fire zones of academe, it’s be cited or blighted. 

(After 14 years with the University of Technology Sydney, business academic Dr Lucy Zhao was fired for not meeting research publication targets.   She won her unfair dismissal claim through the Fair Work Commission this year.)

The West Australian (aka Harvey Norman Times) is where I started as a cadet and left long ago. Last year it sought to republish a recent story.  The features editor wrote:  “I’m afraid I don’t have a budget to offer you payment!’ The exclamation mark was his. 

I replied: “Journos not getting paid?  We should have become plumbers.”

The tabloid is owned by Seven West Media and like other traditional media is in strife. The company’s shares are now worth 12 cents. In 2007 they traded at AUD 13.57.  It’s chaired by Kerry Stokes with a reported net worth of AUD 4.7 billion.

Presumably he pays the plumbers who unblock the toilets in his Dalkeith mansion.  Cheating on tradies is an Australian cultural crime.  Unfortunately people who tap keyboards rather than pipes are excluded.

Parsimony isn’t parochial. The Diplomat is a prestigious international online current affairs magazine started in Australia, now in Washington.  It’s sometimes bought my words. 

Now it includes a question to contributors:  Do you want to be paid?  Tick ‘Yes’ and guess the result.

The ABC reportedly buys freelance copy, but don’t expect a reply to your inquiry. Likewise with The Saturday Paper, The Guardian and almost all the rest.  They’ve pinched Centrelink’s ICS (Ignore Client System) minus the lie:  ‘Your call is important to us’. 

The Web is full of traps for the new jobless, baited with fairytales of thousands paying to read aggregations of lifted stories peppered with the author’s thoughts, what used to be called ‘vanity publishing’. There are e-mail list platforms which claim to help freelancers thrive.  

Here’s one spiel: ‘Our top writers make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by doing the work they care about most and serving their communities of readers.’  Added are examples of newsletters on parenting, music and psychedelics supposedly maintained by subs.

For narrowcasters delivering inside info, or expert at decoding government decisions on issues like superannuation, there may be a market.

 If you write about alleged celebrities’ wardrobe malfunctions, or gush about travel, some may contribute what one critic called ‘digital tip-jar’ payments.

Though not for news and current affairs when there’s peak quality journalism for a pittance.  Just 25 US cents a week will get the New York Times in your e-mail box. The latest Washington Post offer is $29 a year.

The average annual wage for Ozzie journos is AUD 54,000.  Anyone expecting to make even a tenth freelancing is fluttering in the land where cloud cuckoos dwell.  Better off finding a red-brick offering a wrench-ready STEM subject, government subsidised.

If you’ve spent your career handling leaks, then plumbing should be just right.

 Duncan Graham was ‘let go’ by three publishers in one week when Covid-19 hit.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 22 July 2020:
https://johnmenadue.com/how-academics-are-killing-freelancers/

FREE TRADE DEAL AT LAST. WHO'S GOING TO USE?

                              Let the flag follow the trade

It’s a curious cluster – Jamaica, Luxemburg, Costa Rica and Jordan.  Squashed in the middle at 73 is Indonesia.  It’s a lousy rank on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Register because it shouts at potential investors:  Beware!  Yet Australians are being urged by their government to take risks.

Simon Birmingham is a perpetual grinner.  This makes the SA Senator ideal for dealing with Indonesian politicians and business folk who prefer smiling to stern. 

The Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment is doing high-fives at a distance having scored the free-trade goal which eluded his four predecessors.  But pity his wife Courtney.

This is probably the response when she asks if he’d like a coffee:  ‘I’ll consider putting it on the table once the situation resolves itself, for a breakfast beverage forges closer people-to-people relationships and creates a pivotal framework to unlock our bi-lateral partnership particularly when we share a common geographic zone which has many unrealised possibilities ....’ 

By the time he’s come up with an answer, Mrs B would have driven their two girls to school and the kettle would have boiled dry.

That’s how it was last week when Birmingham took almost half a one-hour webcast to tell 1,600 well-informed participants facts they knew well.  His job was to launch the Indonesia-Australia 

Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement which has taken ten years of often stumbling talk to shred tariffs between the two neighbours. 

The imbalance is stark. Last year Australia imported AUD 3 billion worth of Indonesian products and sent commodities valued at AUD 6.7 billion the other way.  Jesters quip:  ‘Indonesia has great potential – and always will.’

West Australian Phil Turtle, chair of the Australia – Indonesia Business Council which hosted the show, is also a cheerful guy, hampering his task of prising anything specific out of the garrulous Birmingham.  He never succeeded.

Apart from his instinct to maunder, the minister – along with the corporate world - doesn’t know how the IA-CEPA will work post-pandemic.  It might be a splendid achievement which benefits all – or a good idea which doesn’t function, like the Covid-19 app.

The polis on both sides and the business folk who have been pushing for this logical deal deserve applause.  Talks often snagged well-charted cays careful captains would have avoided.

The most recent was just 18 months ago when Scott Morrison reckoned steaming behind Donald Trump and recognising West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was a smart idea.  Though not the Indonesian negotiators.

Palestinian leaders pushed Muslim countries to ban Australian imports if the embassy was moved.  Indonesia isn’t an Islamic state but officially 88 per cent of its 270 million citizens follow the faith.  

Someone with a little knowledge of such issues pointed out the sensitivities.  Morrison slammed the engines into reverse by saying no embassy move from Tel Aviv until there’s a peace settlement.  The talks were refloated.

The big stuff looks OK. If all goes well in the next few years there’ll be more Ozzie grains flowing into Indonesian silos, and cattle running into feedlots.

The deal includes a 575,000-head quota, expanding four per cent annually.  This should give pastoralists a more certain market than the on-off, up-down situation they’ve been facing.

That’s provided Black Sea growers and Indian buffalo farmers don’t undercut the Australian price or that the ultra-nationalists don’t start shouting that our wheats are contaminated and haram.  These are the sort of tactics used in the past to thwart competition.  

Tariffs are cudgels in trade brawls.  Eliminating them is like banning knuckledusters – the thugs just turn to knives.  There are ministerial regulations, VATs, import licences, luxury taxes, quarantine rules and wharf delays in the isolationists’ armoury.

Although the IA-CEPA boosters claim Indonesia will now send us furniture, fish and fabrics, they could have done so anyway. The 2010 ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area agreement eliminated tariffs on most goods from developing countries.  Few exporters have been interested because the Australian market is finicky and too small, one Aussie consumer to every 11 Indonesians. 

Cars are also included, but there’s a problem under the bonnet.  Australia wants electrics. There are plans for Indonesia to start production, but factories are still tooled to make internal combustion engines.

More encouraging is the deal allowing tertiary educators into the archipelago. Monash is the most ambitious, led by pro-vice-chancellor Professor Andrew MacIntyre. 

It’s set to open post-grad courses in Jakarta in late 2021, making it the first foreign branch campus in Indonesia.

Although other nations have long allowed overseas educators onto their soil, (Monash is already in Selangor in Malaysia, Suzhou in China and Mumbai in India)  paranoid administrations have resisted, knowing foreigners usually have better standards and higher qualifications than local academics, drawing students seeking quality.

The uni hopes for 2,000 master’s students, 1,000 executive education students and 100 doctoral candidates in the next decade. Grads will get Monash degrees.

Absent from the on-line rah-rah was former investment banker Thomas Lembong, the Harvard-educated one-time Trade Minister, now head of the Investment Coordinating Board.  

Although he lasted less than a year in the ministry, he was an articulate and enthusiastic promoter of free trade. This delighted the Australians though not Indonesian protectionists urging the government to crimp imports and put more energy into making the Republic self-sufficient.  The latest idea being promoted by President Joko Widodo is to create intensive farming ‘food estates’.

During the talks the Indonesians sought jobs for nurses, maids and construction crews - extending people exports beyond Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.  

Indonesian workers are often multi-skilled, willing and prepared to live in remote areas.  Here the nervous negotiators fearing a domestic political backlash (cue unions and Pauline Hanson) took a tough line.

The IA-CEPA does boost quotas on work and holiday visas, eventually allowing entry for 5,000 Indonesians a year. Till Covid-19 arrived, visas were unlimited for most European backpackers who labour on market gardens and farms.  Make of that what you will.

Overall this FTA is a leap forward for Australian primary producers and a shuffle ahead for courageous others.  At this stage, it’s difficult to see many benefits for Indonesian shoppers unless the deal is backed by massive and consistent promotions highlighting Aussie quality and raising awareness of origins.  The flag of friendship might then follow trade.

 (Covid-19 update:  As the mainstream media generally ignores the health crisis next door we report more than 70,000 officially confirmed cases and close to 3,500 deaths.)

(First published in Pearls and Irritations, 14 July 2020:
https://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-let-the-flag-follow-the-trade/

DID WE FORGET? THERE'S LOTS OF LAND AND PEOPLE TWIXT US AND THREATS

Scared of the same bogeyman? Let’s cooperate 

Was Indonesia alerted ahead of the PM’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update and Force Structure Plan announcement?  The presumption is that key people were tipped off, largely because there’s been no blow-back.

The 126-page document makes no mention of Indonesia, though the world’s largest archipelago stands between us and any real or imagined Chinese threat.  

If a Red fleet starts nuclear-powering our way it has two sea-lane choices: Directly through the South China Sea where it has already established military posts, or the roundabout route.  This would skirt the Philippines then through the Pacific Islands where the Middle Kingdom has been consolidating political support. 

There are five mentions in the Australian plan of ‘our region’ along with four for its apparent synonym, the ill-defined ‘Indo- Pacific.’ 

‘ASEAN’ (seven of its ten members have disputes with China over boundaries) and ‘Southeast Asia’ don’t get guernseys.  

China wasn’t mentioned but there’s widespread acceptance that it’s the target, and the current location of any likely conflict the South China Sea. Since 1947 Beijing has claimed a U-shaped zone marked on maps by a line of dashes down the 1,500 km strait.

In 2016 the Philippines challenged this assumption.  The Permanent Court of Arbitration sitting in The Hague found ‘no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the 'nine-dash line'.’  

China ignored the ruling and is reportedly continuing to fish the waters and consolidate bases around the Spratly and Paracel Islands. Meanwhile Indonesia is also strengthening airfields and ports in its nearby Natuna Islands.

The 2006 Lombok Treaty, correctly titled the Agreement between Australia and the Republic of Indonesia on the Framework for Security Cooperation, set terms for talking.  The first clause in Article Three says ‘there shall be ‘regular consultation on defence and security issues of common concern; and on their respective defence policies’.

On any reading that means Jakarta should have been told about Canberra’s plans, so it’s strange there’s been no official confirmation, if only to placate Indonesia’s hyper-nationalists. Instead we’re getting nods and winks, like the Nine Entertainment papers hinting that ‘the upgrade in Australia's strike capacity is likely to be quietly welcomed by our allies in the region.’

One theory for the silence is that it would mean revealing Defence Minister Linda Reynolds has been confiding with her Indonesian counterpart, Prabowo Subianto ahead of the Australian people.  Necessary but distasteful to liberals.

The disgraced former general and son-in-law of second president Soeharto is not Mr Nice Guy.  He fled to exile in Jordan following the 1998 fall of his former protector and after being discharged from the army for ‘misinterpreting orders’ when protesting students disappeared.

He later returned, gathered business backers and became rich, largely through palm-oil plantations and paper mills.  Last year the General Elections’ Commission reported his wealth at almost AUD 2 billion.

Subianto has long been trying for the top job, most recently last year when his Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement) Party sided with radical Islamic groups. He’s reportedly still on a US visa blacklist for alleged human rights abuses in East Timor and Jakarta, making it tricky for negotiating arms deals.

Since being given his present job by President Joko Widodo to keep the aggressive opportunist out of domestic politics, Subianto has been on shopping trips to ten countries, including Russia (twice) and China, though without much luck.

According to a Bloomberg report Washington has put pressure on Indonesia to drop an AUD 1.6 billion plan to buy 11 Sukhoi Su-35 Russian fighter jets and spend AUD 287 million on Chinese military vessels.

This is more catch up than new plans.  Early last decade the administration of sixth President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) introduced its Minimum Essential Force plan to upgrade the armed forces’ hardware.

Indonesia can put almost half-a-million men and a few women into uniform, and muster a similar number of reservists, but can’t equip them well.  Small arms are made locally, but the swifter, smarter whizz-bangs now being readied in the West and China can only be bought from overseas or made under licence.
Doing business with Russia and China, Indonesia's largest trading partner, carries domestic political risks.  The Communist Party has been outlawed in Indonesia since 1966, and like the PM’s references to German fascism in the 1930s, remains a bugbear to make the littlies wet themselves.

The wild-eyed reckon Widodo is a covert Pinko because so many infrastructure projects have been financed – and built – by Beijing contractors.  It’s an idea as loony as the Bill Gates’ world control fantasy, though not easily dismissed as it’s often pushed by white-clad clerics.

The AUD 7.5 billion set aside by Jakarta for healthcare, social protection and economic stimulus programmes during the Covid-19 pandemic is gnawing the defence budget, now down to AUD 11.7 billion from the AUD 12.3 billion allocated earlier.

It’s difficult for laid-back Aussies to understand some states think we’re a threat.  But paranoid Indonesians have a list reminding that the ‘deputy sheriff of Southeast Asia’ (a line attributed to former PM John Howard) got his star from Washington.

Other remembered Irritants include our backing of East Timor’s independence referendum in 1999 (which resulted in an earlier treaty being shredded), and in 2013 getting caught eavesdropping President SBY and his wife Ani’s phones.  

Also on the distrusters’ tally sheet are US marines training in Darwin, new armaments, airfield upgrades and spy-bases along our north coast and Central Australia. We say these are defensive.  That’s not how they appear to those peering south and seeing the pointy ends of weapons aimed their way.  

Don’t be ridiculous, we’d say, they’ll just sail high above your 6,000 inhabited islands like Qantas heading to Singapore. You’ll rarely see contrails and never hear the thrusters. No need to get jumpy like the Japanese when Kim Jong-un tests his big rockets.

Dr Greta Nabbs-Keller writing in the Lowy’s Institute’s The Interpreter is urging ‘deft management by Australian policymakers’ in handling Indonesian concerns.

The Queensland Uni academic reminded that ‘despite growing strategic convergence, its (Canberra’s) views will not always align with those in Jakarta.

‘New and innovative modalities of cooperation with Indonesia and other regional states will need to be formulated and adequately resourced if Defence is to achieve its new strategic objectives in the Indo-Pacific.’

In short – talk.  And put a lot of time and effort into the job.

First published in Pearls and Irritations, 9 July 2020: https://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-scared-of-the-same-bogeyman-lets-cooperate/