The woes of a broken true believing heart.
I’m not happy with the Faceless Men.
It was the end of 2003 and I was burnt out beyond belief. I had just turned 21 and I felt like a failure of the biggest kind. It wasn’t my studies or my achievements that made me feel like a total failure - it was a feeling that I had let the community that I had grown up in down by not being able to stop the Howard Government reforms of higher education.
20 years on and I can see objectively that there was absolutely nothing that was going to stop those reforms coming through. I can see now that a 21 year old little girl from Salisbury with a few banners and idealism was no match for the power and resources of John Howard.
It wasn’t just higher education. This was the period of Tampa and mandatory detention, of wars in middle eastern countries and of course the changes to the Marriage Act which banned gay and lesbian couples from marrying the person they loved.
In amongst this conservative chaos there was a bastion of progressive light - South Australia finally had elected a Labor state government and Mike Rann was our new Premier. He was also my local member of parliament - I grew up in Labor heartland and was on the electoral role for the seat of Ramsay.
I have spent years of my life handing out for Labor and door knocking during periods of the worst racism towards refugees to have difficult conversations about why we should be more empathic. I was really proud of this work, side by side with great men who worked hard to earn their place in our Parliament. I watched as some of the most amazing young people I knew grappled with their fears to become whistleblowers about Australia's treatment of asylum seekers in off shore processing facilities. They are much braver than I'll ever be.
South Australia had come out of a turbulent time after the State Bank collapse had left our state almost incapable of paying it’s bills. We needed a new future and I trusted the state Labor party to deliver. Like many, I thought it was unusual for them to bring in a mining magnate to chair the Economic Development Board, but trusted the judgement of the Labor Men who were doing what was best for kids like me. Kids who had grown up in the northern suburbs with single parents and hope in a more equal world.
The EDB wasn’t the only government committee that they put him on. Right in the middle of all this Howard Government educational reform Robert Champion des Crespigny -was also appointed Chancellor of the University of Adelaide. It was a period of internal chaos also - the young Vice Chancellor Mary O’Kane was out of her post and a new conservative VC was appointed who was rumoured to have required female staff to wear skirts and stockings. He was only there for a short while until the comparatively progressive James McWha was appointed permanently to the role.
I ended up on the University of Adelaide Council as an undergraduate student representative - something kids from Salisbury aren’t really supposed to do. Des Crespigney was the Chair and as a student I was there for the fight for our academic lives - the right for kids like me to get to go to uni at all.
I remember one of my most embarrassing and in hindsight quite funny faux pas really clearly. It was the days when media releases were sent by fax and we’d sent one out prior to the University Council meeting. We’d said that the Council would be discussing the higher education reforms and that we would hold a doorstop interview after the meeting. But we didn’t realise the meeting would run over and so an ABC journalist turned up out the front of the University Administration before the topic had even been discussed. Des Crespigney was tipped off and the Council decided not to discuss the item that day. Greg Crafter thought it was hilarious and told me that one day I’d look back on it and laugh. He was right, but at the time it stung like hell.
It didn’t sting anywhere near as much as when I realised, about a year ago now, that the South Australian Labor Party had appointed Des Cresipigney to the Chancellor of the University of Adelaide, Chair of our Economic Development Board and given him unprecedenced access to the executive committee of our Cabinet (unelected) as well as extensive public service resources whilst he was simultaneously the chair of CT Group.
What’s CT Group? Their website says,
“The C|T Group was founded as Crosby Textor in Australia 2002. The business expanded initially to the United Kingdom and now operates from offices around the world with a team of international, multi-lingual staff. See below to find out about our business leaders and how they can help you.”
If you Google CT Group, you can make your own mind up.
I have more questions than I have answers. Why was the Chair of CT Group also the Chair of our EDB and our sandstone university? Why did they have such unprecedented access to the Executive Committee of our Cabinet and to the resources of our public service? What does any of this mean for our democracy? What decisions were being made and who were they being made for? Is it possible to be the chair of those three groups simultaneously and not have a conflict of interest?
The biggest one though, is what did I vote for in Ramsay? Because I don’t feel like I know anymore.
20 years down the track and what I know is that we have child protection numbers that are out of kilter with our place in the world. I know that the Fringe feels happy and that there are parts of Munno Para West where it is really hard to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. I know that the FIFO pace of mining has hurt the relationships of some of my best friends and that if you don’t have much to start with a small dip in the economy can feel really really bad.
I know that the Northern suburbs doesn’t always feel the same as other parts of South Australia. I know that attempts to try and resolve the harsh inequality felt before and after the closure of Holden’s have not always created results or long lasting change. I know it is really hard to get the small amounts of funding to actually create the change that seems so very obvious.
I know that the gradual defunding of Shine and the women’s sector and preventative health through restructure after restructure and budget cut after budget cut has had more of an impact on my community than I ever felt possible.
The Faceless Men have never scared me. They have faces and names and I started standing up to them back before I ever voted in an election.
But you can’t protest something you can’t see. I couldn’t see this.
If I had known, I would have protested it. But I didn’t know.
How could anyone have known what we were really fighting against? Or fighting for?
I have a lot of questions now.
But I certainly don’t feel like a failure.
