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October 9, 2007
From the ABC's Lateline programme An excerpt of a debate that was organized around Paul Kelly's criticism of Australia's public intellectuals within the so-called culture wars. Virginia Trioli, the presenter, refers to Kelly's article the Australian Literary Review, where Kelly claimed that Australia's public intellectuals are second rate. An example Kelly gives is Indigenous affairs. He says:
I think here we have been very ill-served by the quality of debate of our public intellectuals. I think they've focused far too much on symbolic reconciliation, on political, legal and land rights and that they obscured and overlooked for far too long the reality of life in Aboriginal communities and in Aboriginal Australia.
When we did have the big change in Aboriginal policy here, led very much by Noel Pearson, it's interesting to listen to what Pearson said because his message when he was out in 2001 and 2002 was directed towards the public intellectuals and he said, essentially, 'Change the way you are thinking and talking about Indigenous affairs in this country and if you don't want to change the way you think and talk, then don't meddle in our communities'.
VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Yes. Indigenous affairs was a very interesting issue, particularly of late, Robert Manne, where that divide was clearly recognised that perhaps - can I put it this way? Some of those public intellectuals Paul Kelly is referring to were adhering to some old, perhaps outdated left values that were not serving the practice and policy of Indigenous policies well. That seems to have caught that public class of intellectuals flat-footed. Is that a correct way of characterising it?
ROBERT MANNE: To some extent. It's quite wrong to think that public intellectuals were the main or only bearer of the ideas to do with reconciliation. Oddly enough, the person who convinced me of reconciliation was Paul Kelly in a piece he wrote in about 1992 but we'll leave that aside.
VIRGINIA TRIOLI: A nice bit of detente. That is nice.
ROBERT MANNE: Many Aboriginal intellectuals don't agree with Noel Pearson. I, in fact, think there is a great deal to be said for the Pat Dodson way of looking at the world, which is to think spiritual and symbolic matters are fundamentally important.
I also think it's true to think, as Noel Pearson does, that the left, including left-wing Aboriginal leadership, hasn't produced a way out of the terrible malaise of the community. I don't disagree with that thought. I think it's true the left in general and public intellectuals as well, during the period of the Keating Government in particular and on from that, didn't sufficiently concentrate on the crisis of living. I am sympathetic, actually, to both Pat Dodson and Noel Pearson and I think John Howard's Government has been unnecessarily uninterested in the questions of respect and questions of reconciliation and so on. But I also do think it's true, as Paul said, that a lot of people on the left are still finding hard to come to terms with the crisis of the communities.
Things then move on to other issues.
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Paul Kelly wasnt just talking about public intellectuals but the dreaded so called chattering class "elites".
Such framing language is basically dishonest because it prevents us from asking who the elites really are. That is those who make the decisions about what is going to happen and to be allowed to happen. The captains of industry and finance in other words.
The real elites were those who were invited to the garden party put on for George Bush a couple of years ago---nary a left winger among them.
Meanwhile a couple of years ago Robert Manne was voted as Australia's most admired public intellectual. And I am sure that his good friend Raimond Gaita (who was criticised by Kelly) is even more admired because of the popularity of his marvellous books, especially Romulus My Father.
So whats going on here?
Meanwhile the editor of the OZ takes up the same theme in the October Quadrant re the "right" wing ascendency in the culture wars.
Quadrant that home to some of the most mediocre one dimensional minds in the country.
Personally I think that if the "right", wherever they are culturally and geographically, ever do win the culture wars it will be an unmitigated disaster for all the beings alive on this planet.
The evidence of their benighted mis-understandings on the health of the planet and the collective body politic is already patently obvious to any half sensitive person.