It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, November 27, 2022
AUSTRALIA
Labor seals Senate deal for workplace laws
The Albanese government says stagnant wages will rise after it reached a deal with crossbench senator David Pocock to pass its signature workplace laws.
Working people will be the big winners of a deal that paves the way for Labor’s signature industrial relations laws to pass parliament, the prime minister says.
Following late-night negotiations on Saturday, Senator David Pocock agreed to back the workplace legislation overhaul and enshrine multi-employer bargaining.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said support for the bill meant stagnant wages should rise.
“Today is a huge day for working people, and the decision by the crossbenchers to back Labor’s bill – which will guarantee more-secure work and better pay – is the right one,” he told reporters in Canberra on Sunday.
“The (industrial relations) bill will ensure that there’s a more level playing field.”
Labor has been pushing for the laws to be passed before the end of the year despite only one sitting week remaining.
Under agreed changes to the legislation, the government will set up an independent body to review social support payments before every federal budget.
Small businesses with fewer than 20 employees will be excluded from single-interest multi-enterprise bargaining.
Businesses with fewer than 50 employees will have extra safeguards if they want to opt out of multi-employer bargaining, while the minimum bargaining period will also be increased from six to nine months.
Senator Pocock said the bill was rushed but the changes were a good step forward.
“This is a great outcome and really strikes the right balance to get wages moving for those who need it but also to have some really important safeguards in place, particularly for small businesses,” he said.
Mr Albanese said having an independent committee to examine social payments would be a vital process.
“I would always want to do more for people who are disadvantaged,” he said.
“We don’t like seeing circumstances whereby people are doing it tough, but what we know is that we need to be responsible.”
Opposition workplace relations spokeswoman Michaelia Cash said she was disappointed a deal had been struck on the bill, warning businesses would be unfairly affected by the changes.
“This bill will have a detrimental impact on the Australian economy … I’m disappointed on behalf of the employers of this country, I’m disappointed on behalf of employees of this country,” she said.
Greens employment spokeswoman Barbara Pocock said the government needed to take action on lifting welfare payments.
“We don’t need committees, we need to make sure it actually happens,” she said.
Business groups maintained their criticism of the bill, saying the agreed changes didn’t go far enough to alleviate concerns.
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar said the laws would not lead to increased wages.
“(They) will only add cost and complexity to Australian businesses at a time when they are dealing with deteriorating conditions,” he said.
But ACTU secretary Sally McManus welcomed a deal being struck that allowed the bill to pass.
“It gives people hope that we can start unwinding the large numbers of insecure jobs that we have in this country,” she said.
Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke said the negotiations had been an intense process.
“(Senator Pocock) would have preferred that everything was dealt with next year, when we said we wanted to make decisions this year,” he told ABC’s Insiders program.
The minister said it was likely the lower house would have to sit on Saturday to pass the laws when they cleared the Senate later this week.
– AAP
AUSTRALIA
NSW flooding crisis enters 75th day
By Finbar O'Mallon Updated November 27 2022 - NSW's flood crisis is in its 75th day, with the weekend ending as storms battered parts of Sydney.
(Lucy Cambourn/AAP PHOTOS)
Regional NSW towns could remain cut off from the state by floodwaters for up to a month with residents relying on food and medications flown in by helicopter.
The state's flood crisis entered its 75th day on Monday with the weekend ending as severe storms battered parts of Sydney.
In the western NSW town of Euabalong, local publican Neil Quinn said the town had just stared down the swollen Lachlan River with a freshly built bank holding back floodwaters.
"I don't know how we did it, but we stopped the river," Mr Quinn told AAP on Sunday.
It followed a tense week where the town's original flood bank began to fail and evacuation orders were issued.
Mr Quinn said the town would be relying on helicopters for supplies for at least a month.
About 66 emergency warnings were in place across NSW on Sunday.
Likewise in parts of Victoria and South Australia, residents were on edge as floodwaters continued to cause havoc.
In Victoria, major flood warnings were in place at Wakool Junction, Boundary Bend, Euston and Moulamein.
In SA, the State Emergency Service had issued multiple warnings across the Murray River.
Australian Associated Press
AUSTRALIA
NSW student doctors to get paid jobs in hospitals in bid to ease staff shortages
NSW premier announces university-linked medical program to tackle hospital shortages. Medical students in NSW will be soon be given paid positions in hospitals to bolster the health workforce.
Key points:
Final-year medical students across eight universities will be eligible for the program
The new paid positions are in response to increased staff workload
Both regional and metropolitan hospitals will employ the assistants
The NSW government will create more than 1,000 part-time positions annually for final-year trainees to work alongside doctors as paid "assistants in medicine" in city and regional hospitals.
The program was first trialled in 2020 to combat a staff shortage during the pandemic, and allows final-year students more time in wards and theatres than a usual university placement.
Premier Dominic Perrottet said the program was the first of its kind in the country.
"Our last-year medical students as part of this program are working under supervision with doctors. It actually enhances the health system," Mr Perrottet said.
"Not only are we having more hands on deck, in addition to that we're providing more experience for our future doctors."
Nurses and midwives marched through Sydney's CBD earlier this month, warning of "extreme fatigue" among health workers who were regularly covering extra shifts on understaffed wards.
Mr Perrottet said the problem of skilled worker shortages was not isolated to NSW.
"This is a national issue, it's an international problem, but we'll get through it," he said.
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said the program had proved a "win-win" for students and hospitals.
"These medical students have done an exceptional job supporting our frontline hospital staff in the most critical of times during COVID-19 and, in doing so, gained fantastic experience that will help propel their careers forward as the next generation of NSW doctors," Mr Hazzard said. Fears of mass exodus of hospital workers A senior doctor warns Australians will soon no longer be able to assume that if they get sick there'll be an ambulance, hospital bed or doctor to take care of them.
An evaluation of the trial found supervisors saw rapid skill progression among the students, and it freed up more qualified junior doctors to focus on clinical tasks and patient care, and attend theatre more frequently.
Medical student Tessa Eves, who works in palliative care at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital as part of the trial, said it was an invaluable way to learn practical skills while studying.
"Sometimes it'll be you and the intern if the more senior staff are busy. Other times you will have the whole team there," Ms Eves said.
"Things crop up during the day and this is where being a [medical assistant] is really helpful, because if they've only got one junior doctor and you've got 10 jobs to do, that's a lot of pressure."
NSW Labor leader Chris Minns said he did not mind the idea, but more should be done to fix staff shortages in the public health system.
"I don't think it should take away from the extreme pressure that western Sydney emergency departments are going through," Mr Minns said.
The assistants in medicine are final-year medical students from the Australian National University, University of Sydney, the University of Notre Dame, Macquarie University, Western Sydney University, University of New South Wales, University of Newcastle/University of New England and University of Wollongong.
Climate Council report finds Queensland bears highest cost of climate disasters in Australia
Brisbane has seen $1.38 billion in insured losses from flooding so far this year.(Supplied: Nearmap)
Queensland suffered more economic damage from extreme weather disasters than any other state or territory, and more extreme weather is on the way.
Key points:
Disasters have cost Queensland about $30 billion since the 1970s
The former QFES commissioner says the disaster management system is under pressure
Public infrastructure damage in south-east Queensland has cost $492 million since the 1970s
A Climate Council report released today has examined the financial, social and economic costs of climate change-driven weather events.
It found Queensland has lost a total of about $30 billion from extreme weather disasters since 1970 — about three times that of Victoria.
The economic cost to Queensland from the floods in February and March alone was $7.7 billion, with an estimated $5.56 billion in insured losses across south-east Queensland and coastal NSW.
Brisbane suffered about $1.38 billion in insured losses from this year's floods, more than any other local government area in Australia.
It comes in the wake of the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology's biennial State of the Climate report, which found changes to weather and climate extremes are happening at an increased pace across the country. And more extreme weather is likely to come this summer.
The BOM's official summer outlook suggests eastern Australia will see above-average rainfall with more flooding expected.
Professor Lesley Hughes, a co-author of the report and a professor of biology at Macquarie University, said with the amount of rain falling in some areas, there's not enough time between disasters for communities to recover.
"We've got a situation where the catchments in many parts of eastern Australia are already saturated, so they they can't really absorb more water." Emergency services stretched to the limit
The emotional toll of seeing your home flood multiple times in one year is hard to fathom, but the people working to coordinate, sandbag, rescue and help clean up these disasters are also feeling the strain.
Former Queensland Fire and Emergency Services commissioner Lee Johnson said disaster-management and emergency service systems are under a great deal of pressure and "have been for some time".
Former commissioner Lee Johnson said he began to notice an increase in natural disasters in 2006 after Tropical Cyclone Larry.
(Supplied: Climate Council)
Mr Johnson, who is also a member of Emergency Leaders for Climate Action — a coalition of former senior emergency service leaders — said of the 225,000-odd staff involved in emergency services in Queensland, about 200,000 were volunteers.
He said the constant need to respond to disasters has taken a great toll on volunteers across the board, from emergency services to the CWA and Red Cross.
"They live in communities. And they're impacted by what's happening in the disaster sense, just as much as anybody else."
Most of Queensland's emergency services are volunteers.
(AAP: Dan Peled)
Mr Johnson believes there's room to evolve coordination between governments to better respond to weather disasters.
"So traditionally, seasonally, the bushfire season starts early in Queensland, and then moves into southern Australia," he said.
"We're into floods and cyclones while southern Australia is burning and we're able to share resources both ways, and we've done that over many years.
"That's getting harder and harder, so some thought has to go into how can we cross-border support each other better? What mechanisms can be introduced that might make that easier?"
Business bookings affected by unpredictability
Innes Larkin, co-owner of Mount Barney Lodge in South East Queensland.
(Supplied: Climate Council)
Innes Larkin, the co-owner of Mount Barney Lodge in south-east Queensland, said his business has been affected by the new unpredictability in the weather.
Mr Larkin said the change has had an affect on people booking in advance.
"We've gone from getting two to three months of pre-bookings where we know our clearer picture of what's coming ahead to two to three days."
Mr Larkin wants Australian leaders to "take climate action seriously" and "fully commit to net-zero".
"You can't pretend to have a net-zero pathway and be opening up new coal and gas fields, those two are mutually exclusive and incompatible."
How can we future-proof our cities?
Public infrastructure damage from weather disasters in south-east Queensland is estimated to have cost $492 million since the 1970s.
Dr Dorina Pojani, a senior lecturer in urban planning at the University of Queensland, said all land use, design, and transport decisions into the future should consider climate and weather events.
For example, approvals of developments on flood-prone land need to stop.
"At the same time, we don't want Brisbane to sprawl out further — as that would lead to more car driving," Dr Pojani said.
"The solution is to densify existing built-up areas which are protected from floods.
"Local residents will have to accept that the era of living in low-density housing is (or will soon be) over."
'The key to this whole situation'
The Climate Council's report states recent weather disasters have been "supercharged by climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels".
Queensland produces the most coal of any state and more gas than every state except Western Australia.
In 2021–2022, the Queensland government provided $665 million in assistance to the fossil fuel industry, the bulk of which was spent on publicly owned coal mines, gas fields and fossil fuel power stations, according to the Australia Institute.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said she was was "angry" and "disappointed" at the Queensland Resources Council over its campaign.
(ABC News: Christopher Gillette)
Professor Hughes said governments "can't have it both ways".
"We've got communities absolutely suffering from the impacts of increasing climate-related disasters, and some of the largest companies in the world making extraordinary profits being propped up by the Australian taxpayer," she said.
Mr Johnson agreed.
"We really must reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which is the burning of coal, oil and gas as quickly as we possibly can," he said.
"That's the key to this whole situation."
CAPITALI$T
Economics has helped to destroy the environment. Can it be used to save it?
The Burnett Mary Regional Group in Queensland has completed Australia's first large-scale environmental audit.(ABC News: Patrick Heagney) Australia is on the verge of having the world's first national accounting system that tracks the health of a country's natural environment, according to former Treasury secretary Ken Henry.
Key points:
The Burnett Mary Regional Group in Queensland has completed Australia's first large-scale environmental audit
Dr Ken Henry says it could revolutionise the market system
It could lead to the world's first national environmental account
It may help to solve one of the most urgent problems facing humanity: how to reverse global environmental destruction.
"I think this is a game changer, I really do," he told the ABC.
"What we've done for the first time anywhere in the world at regional scale is to make an assessment, an audit if you like, of the environmental condition of the landscape.
"We've now demonstrated that it can be done ... and there is intense interest from financial markets people in seeing whether it's possible to commercialise this data, in the form of a biodiversity credit for example, and it looks like there is the possibility to do so."
Dr Henry said it will hopefully lead to future business profit-making also regenerating the planet.
"After all, almost all of human activity on earth rests one way or another upon the condition of the natural environment, and if we don't address the deterioration of the natural environment sometime pretty damn soon, the rest of it's going to come crashing down," he told the ABC.
So what is he talking about?
Ken Henry, former Treasury secretary, says the traditional business model of profit-maximisation that excludes environmental destruction from its calculations has done terrible damage to the planet(Source: John Gunn, ABC News)
One of Australia's systems of resource management
Australia is divided into 54 natural resource management regions (NRMs — see map below).
They are a mix of government and non-government organisations (NGOs) that deliver projects on the ground designed to improve the environment.
Many have been in existence since the mid-1990s and their origins can be traced to the landcare movement of the 1980s.
They've all been recognised as regional NRM organisations by the federal government as part of the Natural Heritage Trust and its successor programs including the National Landcare program.
The Australian Government has been a major investor in natural resource management since the mid 1980s(Source: NRM Regions Australia website)
Its territory includes Bundaberg, the Burnett and Mary rivers, and the world heritage-listed K'Gari (formerly Fraser Island).
It is the NRM that has conducted the environmental audit Dr Henry is talking about.
It has employed scientists to take a stocktake of the natural assets within its borders, including its plants and animals, its vegetation cover, its soil condition (including CO2 stores) and the health of its rivers and waterways, over 56,000 square kilometres.
To collect the data, the scientists used eDNA metabarcoding, portable water sensor smart-stations, satellite remote sensing and Bayesian modelling, and their methods were complemented by consultations with traditional owners.
Sheila Charlesworth, BMRG's chief executive, said it took over 18 months to compile the "environmental account", but it took years of work beforehand to perfect the methodology.
And she's excited about the next step.
"Now we can actually quantify and measure, on an annual basis, the difference that we're making [to the environment]," she said.
"It's not just for BMRG, it's for all NRM groups across Australia."
She said at the NRM national conference in Western Australia earlier this month, other NRMs made a commitment to take their own environmental stocktakes using the same methodology.
"We're currently working on the rollout of the road map for training across Australia," she said.
L to R: Tom Espinoza, director of research at BMRG, Brendan Fletcher, land and sea ranger at Gidarjil Development Corporation, Sheila Charlesworth, chief executive of BMRG, Brent Mclellan, operations manager at Gidarjil Development Corporation, Ben Hoekstra, project officer at BMRG
(ABC News: Patrick Heagney)
So what exactly does the environmental account do?
Dr Henry said the environmental account in the BMRG was important for one key reason.
He said it created a baseline dataset of the environment in that region, and that will allow scientists to track changes in the health of the environment over time — to see if it's degrading or improving.
He said that will lay the foundation for the creation of new markets that will attach a financial value to the improvement in environmental conditions.
And that means businesses will be incentivised to start pouring vast sums of money into projects that improve the environment because it will be the profitable thing to do.
He said the new markets will hopefully spread across the country as other NRMs take stocktakes of their own natural assets and "environmental accounting" goes mainstream.
YOUTUBE
Why nature is the next big asset class
Dr Henry said this concept was a personal passion.
He's now a director of a company called Accounting for Nature (AfN) that has developed the methodology and scientifically-based framework for the environmental accounting that has been used in the Queensland pilot.
Other AfN board members include Peter Harper, the former Deputy Australian Statistician at the Australian Bureau of Statistics who was responsible for the ABS's environmental statistics program, and chair Peter Cosier, the renowned conservationist and co-founder of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.
He said AfN was only established a few years ago, but the history of the company stretched back much further to his time in Treasury when he was having conversations with people like Peter Cosier.
"It's really his brainchild," he said of Mr Cosier.
Dr Henry said when he was Treasury secretary (between 2001 and 2011) he could see how policymakers were trying to make decisions affecting the wellbeing of millions of Australians, but those decisions were based on data about the environment that had huge information gaps.
"It struck me that the information available to us in the environmental area was particularly bad, particularly lacking in breadth and depth," he said.
"When you consider the State of the Environment reports that are published every five years ... you [see] the paucity of data the authors of those reports rely upon.
"The reports are incredibly well written, very high quality, but the data limitations are just absolutely staggering. And you know, report after report, the authors refer to data limitations, saying, 'If only we had better data'."
He said before AfN existed he'd taken the idea of environmental accounting to Malcolm Turnbull to see if he was interested in backing it. How Turnbull's leadership came crashing down Malcolm Turnbull is no longer the Prime Minister, after a leadership challenge that became uglier by the minute over the space of four days. Here's how it unfolded.
"A group of us, four of us, had a meeting with Malcolm Turnbull when he was prime minister, in his office in Sydney, and we took him through the methods and standards, the approach ... and we said the Australian government could roll this out around Australia, through the NRMs, one NRM at a time, and you would have, prime minister, the world's first national environmental account.
"And he said, 'I love it. We're going to do it.' But a few weeks later he lost his job."
Mr Turnbull lost the prime ministership in August 2018 when he was rolled by his partyroom and replaced by Scott Morrison as leader.
Dr Henry said after years of frustration and seeing "very little progress" at the national level in Australia on the production of a national environmental account, he and others had decided it was time to do something different.
"The Queensland government got in touch with some of us and said, 'We're aware that you have some intellectual property here, you know how to do this, we want to roll out our land restoration fund, and we need some really good indicators of environmental outcomes to back our scheme so it's a scheme that's credible and has high integrity'," he said.
"They encouraged us to set up this not-for-profit entity called Accounting for Nature, which we did about four years ago."
How will the new financial products work?
Martijn Wilder is the founder and chief executive of Pollination Group, a climate change investment and advisory firm.
He's taking the news of BMRG's environmental account to financial markets to explain to them what's happening in Australia.
He said the development of environmental improvement as an asset class was still in its early stages, but the benefits of the concept were obvious.
Martijn Wilder, the founder and chief executive of Pollination Group(ABC News: John Gunn)
That's a type of loan from a bank that incentivises businesses to invest money in the environment around them, to promote sustainability and protect the natural biodiversity of the local area, by offering cheaper interest rates for businesses that invest in local projects.
That type of product makes sense from a bank's perspective because it means the businesses it lends to will have a better chance of remaining profitable in the long-run, and it makes sense from an insurance company's perspective if it reduces the "nature risk" and "climate risk" facing businesses across the country. Pollution 'reduces butterflies, bees pollinating flowers' A study of the effects of common air pollutants at levels below national guidelines has found their presence significantly reduces the rate of pollination for bees and butterflies.
According to Mr Wilder, the BMRG's environmental account is significant because it will clearly show, with demonstrable results, if the environmental health of the region is improving over time. And if the environment is becoming healthier, it will increase the value of the region's natural assets.
He said there was "no clear precedent" for this type of thing and people were still trying to figure out how to value environmental assets as an asset class.
But it essentially came down to one thing: accepting that all human and economic activity relies on the natural environment, so the environment must be protected.
"We're seeing globally a movement towards the importance of trying to protect nature, but the challenge has been how to actually get capital to invest in that," he told the ABC.
"Some of the work we've been doing ... is looking at how do you actually invest in those more traditional activities that interact with nature, like farming, forestry, and do them in a more sustainable, regenerative way, that not only protects nature but also increases the productivity of the land.
"Over time, we're hoping that it will be possible to invest in biodiversity, to invest in wildlife and other aspects of nature, that will produce an economic return." Who has backed the project?
The pilot in Queensland had some financial backing from Andrew and Nicola Forrest's Minderoo Foundation.
Adrian Turner, who leads the foundation's Fire and Flood Resilience initiative, said the foundation invested millions in the project.
He said the foundation wanted to see a common way of measuring the condition of the environment that took into account how resilient different landscapes were to fire and floods.
"We think what will emerge is multiple classes of credit for investment vehicles, with the ones that take into account fire and flood resilience being valued highest," he told the ABC.
Adrian Turner leads the Minderoo Foundation's Fire and Flood Resilience initiative(ABC News: John Gunn)
"We're familiar with carbon credit schemes, but if we take that as an example, then a carbon offset or a carbon credit that's not taking into account the risk of fire and flood has to be worth less in our view, like if a fire roars through a landscape that's been regenerated, then effectively we're back to square one and having to start again."
Mr Turner said the Minderoo Foundation really wanted this environmental accounting approach to be scaled nationally and internationally.
"So we have a set of national natural capital accounts that can be used to inform private sector investment, government investment, and also to give us a consistent way to measure the impact over time of our actions as a society on biodiversity and the environment more broadly," he said.
When will companies become 'nature positive'?
Dr Adrian Ward, the chief executive of AfN, said the world was familiar with the concept of "climate risk".
But these new environmental accounts should help people think about "nature risk" too.
He said businesses will eventually have to expand their ambitions from being "net zero" to being "nature positive," which is a situation in which profitable companies are profitable precisely because they're having a net positive impact on the environment.
"Many farmers in Australia and worldwide have been doing incredible conservation and land restoration efforts for a long time, but they've never had a framework that shows the improvement in nature [that's occurred from their efforts]," he said.
Dr Adrian Ward, the chief executive of Accounting for Nature(ABC News: Steve Keen)
"So what we really hope is, and it's very early days, as we go into the future new markets will emerge ... that will pay farmers for the improvements they're making across the landscape."
He said AfN will be able to provide third-party audit certification for the environmental accounts of other NRMs to maintain the integrity of the data.
"Accounting for Nature was very much born to bring integrity to new environmental markets, and we'll do that through very strong and stringent governance and certification standards, which includes third-party audits," he said.
"All of the methods that are used to produce the environmental accounts ... are accredited by the group's science accreditation committee which includes some very well known scientists in the Australian community," he said. Using the market system to save the environment (and capitalism)
Dr Henry said the world had come a long way in recent decades, because concern for the environment was no longer confined to people living on the "fringe" of society.
He said everyone was realising that the old business model of profit-maximisation that excluded environmental destruction from its calculations was an appalling failure.
This is how to calculate GDP The history of the GDP measurement is fascinating, but the number has its problems.
GDP measures economic output. But it's not the only measure of national wellbeing - and may not be the best.
"We've now got shareholders, they're the beneficiaries of the profits, but they're saying, 'Hang on, this is not right'," he said.
"We've got workers saying, 'Why the hell would I want to work for you, given the damage that you're inflicting on the natural environment?'
"We've got consumers saying, 'Why would I buy your products, given the damage you've been inflicting on the natural environment?'
"All of these — the shareholders, the workers, and the consumers — they are putting at risk the viability of that business [model], and so the businesses themselves are now reacting and they're saying, 'Okay, in order to save ourselves, we have to address the negative externalities that we're generating.' "So, this is business saving itself from itself," he told the ABC.
Dr Ken Henry says governments have been "absolutely hopeless" at protecting the environment(ABC News: Joanne Shoebridge)
Hunter Lovins sent a draft of Factor Four to Paul Hawken in early 1995. He saw that it was the exposition that natural capitalism needed if it were to make ...
POLITICAL ECONOMY WAS ORIGINALLY KNOWN AS POLITICAL ECOLOGY
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WebThe first involves bringing our knowledge of Chinese economic history closer to parity with what we know about Europe, largely by making estimates for consumption, income, and …
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WebPolitical ecology as a branch of knowledge has to address three crucial problems: limited resources and their uneven distribution; the relationship between industrialization and pressures on the environment; and finally, pollution and waste. The analysis of the problems in this order looks most logical from the standpoint of the production cycle.
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Weba “broadly defined political economy,” cultural ecology (otherwise known as “ecological anthropology”), and the natural science of ecology. These ... Marxism, giving birth to the first phase of political ecology
Failed dreams of building 'New Australia' utopia in Paraguay jungle in 19th century
The first group of Australians who sailed to South America in the 1890s to start a commune.
(Supplied: Arthur Edwards)
Would you give it all up for a new life in a tropical utopia?
That's what more than 500 Australians did in the 1890s, led by a radical socialist, but the venture didn't quite go to plan.
It turns out that combining Australian shearers with the South American jungle, jaguars, parasitic insects and strict rules about booze and sex was not the secret to a utopian new life.
Arthur Edwards is fascinated by the ill-fated New Australia.
(Supplied: Arthur Edwards)
The little-known misadventure of founding a New Australia commune still fascinates historians such as Argentinian-born researcher Arthur Edwards.
"It would have been absolute hell," Mr Edwards said.
"It was bound to fail. You can't convert a group of hard-working, rowdy shearers into Christian teetotallers, it's just against the Aussie spirit."
Promise of a better life
William Lane was a radical socialist who took on the plight of striking shearers
(Supplied: State Library Queensland)
Life in Australia was tough in the late 1800s with massive shearer strikes, colonial government crackdowns, devastating drought and depression looming.
Conditions were perfect for the ambitious South American plans of controversial journalist and radical socialist William Lane.
His promise of a New Australia commune, one that offered a fair deal for all, was enticing for a group of mostly unionists, disgruntled shearers and socialist Christians who sold everything to fund the arduous adventure.
Paul Taylor's grandfather Harry Taylor was one of Mr Lane's most avid followers.
"He was one of quite a number of people in Australia at the time who were disenchanted with life … the haves and have-nots," Mr Taylor said.
"They wanted to live under a fairer socialist or a communist ideal, where everything was shared, and everybody worked for the common good." Setting sail
Mr Lane took advantage of an offer by the Paraguay government to gift 75,000 hectares of free land to migrants in an attempt to repopulate the country after up to 90 per cent of the nation's male population was killed in the war against Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina.
The Royal Tar was built with the collective funds of the New Australian followers.(Supplied: Queensland State Library)
The first group of Australians set off in search of a better life in 1893 on the Royal Tar, a tall ship built with the collective funds of Mr Lane's devotees.
After months at sea, they arrived, via Argentina, in Paraguay's wet and wild jungle that couldn't be further from the utopia they were promised.
The group, who'd given up all their worldly goods to start on an even footing, set to work clearing the jungle by hand, under the constant threat of stalking jaguars, disease and skin-burrowing parasitic insects.
Members of the New Australian commune were mostly single men.
(Supplied: State Library South Australia)
"It was really hard work clearing the jungle and planting enough crops to feed them all, and soon the cracks began to show," Mr Taylor said.
"The idea was they would work on principles of mateship and equality, but human nature being what it is, the whole thing started to fall apart quite quickly."
Commune abandoned
Harry Taylor recruited people willing to travel to Paraguay to live by Mr Lane's strict socialist ideals.(Supplied: State Library South Australia)
The environment may have caused cracks, but Mr Lane's rules and regime potentially did more damage to the fledgling community's long-term hopes.
He immediately set very strict rules banning alcohol or any fraternisation with the local women, which proved particularly difficult for many of the young single shearers.
"Paraguay had lost a lot of its male population due to war, there were 150,000 single women there after the war, and only 14,000 men," Mr Taylor said.
"So, to not be able to fraternise with the local women was a pretty tough call for the shearers."
Mr Edwards said it was hard to imagine how challenging the journey would have been 130 years ago.
"The shearers had lost all faith in Australia after fighting for their rights to fair pay," he said.
"They had to start from scratch … carving a town and farms out of thick jungle with barely enough food to survive.
"It would have been hard enough without William Lane's strict rules."
After almost three years, New Australia comprised a few small villages and farms but many settlers had left to seek a better life in larger cities.
In response to falling numbers and failing finances, and appalled by the behaviour of the young shearers, Mr Lane abandoned the community.
Mr Lane broke away with a smaller group of followers to start another commune
.(Supplied: State Library South Australia)
He then led another attempt with an even more devoted group of 60 Christian socialists, who built a new community named Cosme.
That too failed. Five years after leaving Australia, Mr Lane ditched his socialist utopian dream and moved to New Zealand. In a twist, he returned to journalism, this time for a right-wing newspaper.
Paul Taylor grew up hearing stories of his grandfather's life in the socialist Paraguayan utopia.(Supplied: Paul Taylor)
Many of the other Australians returned home and settled in Mildura, Victoria, and the South Australian Riverland.
In his later years, Harry Taylor purchased the Murray Pioneer newspaper, which is still run by the Taylor family, now in its fourth generation.
To this day, there are descendants of the original New Australians in Paraguay, with names like Woods or Burke. Gone are the Aussie accents, but some traits of red hair and fair skin remain. Among those who returned to Australia was poet Mary Gilmore, who believed in socialist ideals throughout her life and wrote about her time in South America.
Mary Gilmore who was among the original socialists who travelled to Paraguay to build the commune.(Supplied: RBA) "Mary Gilmore says it wasn't a success, but she'd never call it a failure, it was just an experience," Mr Edwards said.
"Under a dictatorship by William Lane it was never going to work … really he got the wrong group of people to do it, especially shearers who wouldn't put up with it."
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Frederick Engels. From http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc- utop/index.html. Converted to eBook by Andrew ...
