How An Unequal Society Hurts Us All - and What We Can Do About It
Wendy Brooks has worked in marketing, strategy and senior management across the health, tertiary education, corporate, legal, social welfare and arts sectors. A strong commitment to community and social justice has informed Wendy's involvement as board director of many organisations including Scope (Vic), The Women's Hospital Foundation and Women with Disability Victoria. Currently Wendy serves on the Queen Victoria Women's Centre Trust, The National Trust of Victoria Foundation and Human Rights Watch Australia.
Thanks to the support and dedication of Club members and our partners, RC CMS has just delivered another successful pre-Christmas Community Village program in the heart of the CBD.
This flagship community service project is focused on ordinary young people out for a social night on the town. It aims to provide them with a welcoming place where they can take a break, get free refreshments and wait safely for transport home. This year the Community Village operated from 10:30pm to 3:30am on each of the four Friday and Saturday nights before Christmas - building on the experience of previous years to target the Club’s efforts to those nights where it would have the most impact.
Records were set on several nights in terms of the number of hot drinks served, bottles of water distributed and interactions with people on the street. It was not unusual for the volunteers to be asked “Why are you doing this ?” That was the perfect segue to point to the Rotary International logo displayed on the marquee - and the Rotary Club of Central Melbourne-Sunrise Inc banner on the adjacent Club trailer - and explain the concept of a community service organization. This seemed to find a positive response with many of the questioners: several hundred dollars in unsolicited donations for the Club’s projects were received over the course of the eight nights.
None of this would have been possible without the work of the 29 volunteers who braved the unsociable hours and the early morning cold to stage the Community Village. A third of those volunteers worked on two – and sometimes three - of the eight nights. But it was not just the “face time” between 10:30pm and 3:30am which successfully delivered this project. There was also a lot of unseen but vital work outside those times – organizing and rostering the volunteers, towing the trailer to/from the CBD each night, replenishing the consumables in the trailer before each staging, plus weekly liaison with our community partners: Victoria Police, the City of Melbourne and St Paul’s Cathedral.
Those community partners gave strong moral and material support to the program. The City of Melbourne provided free secure parking for the volunteers and 240V electricity to power the Village, while Victoria Police provided direct mobile phone access to the Forward Commander in the CBD each night that the Village operated, plus multiple visits to the Community Village by Police foot patrols during the course of each night. In addition, Victoria Police provided financial support for the more than $1,100 worth of coffee, tea, sugar, UHT milk, soup, cups, biscuits and bottled water consumed during the eight nights.
The area around the Village generally appeared to be less boisterous – but no less busy - than in previous years. There were no serious incidents during any of the eight nights, with the collapse of a plastic chair one night while a man was seated in it being the most significant mishap. Fortunately, he was not injured and appeared more embarrassed than anything else.
Twice during the 2013 pre-Christmas period Victoria Police expressed its appreciation via email of the Club’s work on the project and the calming effect that the presence of the Community Village had in the area around St Paul’s Cathedral. That section of Swanston Street sees significant pedestrian traffic in the early hours of the morning, since it is the departure point for the Nightrider bus services to the suburbs from 12:30am onwards: an ideal location for our target demographic.
Looking forward this new year, the Club is currently in discussion with the organizers of White Night Melbourne 2014 to conduct an extended Community Village during that cultural festival on February 22nd – 23rd. The proposal – which was suggested by our community partners – would provide the Rotary Club with another opportunity to raise our profile within the CBD and with the City of Melbourne. Volunteers will soon be sought to staff the two or three shifts needed to operate that Village over the period 7pm Saturday 22nd to 7am Sunday 23rd.
Who’d have thought that Australia’s ‘history wars’ and a mighty and violent national uproar centred at Melbourne University, arose from an address to a Rotary International conference at Warrnambool in 1984! Well, that’s not quite right. The book co-authored by current Melbourne University Ernest Scott Professor of History, Stuart Macintyre, “The History Wars”, says it was a Rotary International conference but Marjorie and Bernie Gerlinger agree it could only have been a District Conference, (and definitely not a District 9800 conference , or District 280 as it once was). Their certainty is because the 1993 Rotary International Convention in Melbourne involved 25,000 or more guests, so many that the opening ceremony had to be done in two sittings at the Tennis Centre to fit everyone in. Sydney’s RI convention next June expects 25,000 or so sign-ons. Warrnambool is a bit small for these RI gatherings. The historian’s error may have arisen simply because all Rotary members are members of Rotary International. Slightly more correct would have been "Rotary International District Conference".
So what was the Warrnambool talk about? The book says,
Below: Geoff Blainey
“Early in 1984, when Geoffrey Blainey [then the university’s Ernest Scott Professor of History and head of department] voiced misgivings about immigration to a gathering of Rotary International at Warrnambool, he didn’t expect his remarks to arouse controversy. He had made similar comments before and in more prominent forums. This address however was recorded by an alert local journalist and taken up by the metropolitan press...
“His comments on current immigration policy came at the end of an explanation of how Australia had changed for the better – indeed he wrote the final passages at the breakfast table just before he went to Warrnambool as he searched for an apt conclusion to an address he had prepared.
“The address provided an historical perspective on the theme of multiculturalism. It reminded listeners that ours was a migrant society made up of waves of newcomers, and that Aboriginal and colonial Australia had been more multicultural than the present. It related the dismantling of the White Australia Policy that had operated for much of the 20th century, and welcomed the growth of diversity and tolerance.
“Only in the improvised conclusion did Blainey strike a cautionary note. There was a danger of pressing too far ahead of public opinion, he suggested, especially at a time of unemployment. An increasing number of Australians seemed to be resentful of the large number of Vietnamese and other South-East Asian settlers who through no fault of their own, were unable to find work and lived here at taxpayers’ expense. The old white Australia policy had been arrogant and insensitive to the people in the region. The present (policy) was arrogant and insensitive to a large section of the Australian population...”
The consequences for Blainey were grave, although Gallup Polls found popular support for his views. 24 of his fellow historians at Melbourne University (including Macintyre) signed a press letter dissociating themselves from his views and accusing him of using terms that would invite others to ‘incite feelings of racial hatred’. His lectures were picketed and demonstrators broke into the building where he was giving a history tutorial. The university installed a special machine to inspect all incoming mail. Blainey was told by the university that on security grounds, he must cancel all future addresses at the university that year. He and his family were threatened with violence, and police told him to get his address off the phone directory and reinforce his home security.
The most disturbing incident, not publicised at the time by police for fear of provoking copycats, occurred when someone planted a real bomb on the lawn of another person named Blainey who lived close to Monash University.
Blainey remained Dean of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts but was effectively silenced there. He resigned in December 1988 to become a ‘freelance’ historian. In 2007 Melbourne University itself made him an honorary doctor of laws, saying in the citation that "few graduates of this University have exerted greater influence on national life".
Clubrunner has a new facility which can send out up to 10 copies of the same RCCMS bulletin to each member's email in-box. This means, for example, that you could on-send one bulletin to each of 10 friends!
The trial sendout proved a great success last month, with most members getting six copies and one member even getting eight.
To perfect this new facility, please tick a box below for your editor.
( ) Yes, I'd like 10 copies. Other people get heaps of emails generally, but I don't get many myself and I'm getting a complex about it
( ) Five at a time will be sufficient, thanks. I only have five friends.
( ) Just one copy per week please. I have managed ok with only one weekly copy in the past.
( ) Unsubscribe me altogether, the bulletin is just a load of old rope.
The Community Village in action, Dec 2013
Below: Geoff Blainey
