As far as eras of Australian policy go, we’ve done a lot worse that Rudd-Gillard-Rudd. The period from 2007-13 could not be truthfully described as visionary, but we can probably go with “not that shit”. Both leaders made moves to mildly defy the financialisaton that had begun to conspicuously wreck the world the very same year that Rudd took office. Both worked with a treasurer who moved throughout the GFC beyond the ALP’s established neoliberalism and listened to some people who had read some books. They were crap on asylum, but they were good on infrastructure. They were useless hypocrites on the NT Intervention and support to single parents, but they did seem to give half a toss about climate change. It was nice that Kevin spoke basic Mandarin. It was nice that Julia spoke like my Aunty Joan. In sum: we’ve lived through shoddier times.
The pair is now at great risk of ruining their reputation for slight good in office, however. Of course, this has been true of Kevin Rudd for a while, possibly since his successful leadership challenge in 2013 and definitely since he started ardently believing that he could fit into the superhero strides of the UN secretary-general. But now, Gillard seems to be in a similar danger for similar reasons. Kevin’s ambition to join zombie liberal institutions seems disproportionate to his charm and has been harmful to his legacy. Julia, although certainly more charming, may not be far behind.
[Even Keating now admits that neoliberalism should be dragged out the back and shot]
Gillard, a more naturally modest person than Rudd (then again, who isn’t?) didn’t aim straight away for an office at United Nations Plaza. She wrote an inoffensive memoir, committed herself to the Clinton cause, apparently for reasons of defying Islamic State solely through the power of sisterhood, and gained a post at centrist DC think-tank, the Brookings Institution. Oh, and she joined that local stigma-lifting gym for the exercise of former politicians, Beyondblue. This one-time member of the Labor Left could only be cast as more of a bourgeois moderate in a late David Williamson play.
And today, here she is embracing the term that has served for some decades to artfully conceal neoliberal ideology: global. I hadn’t noticed in 2014 that Gillard became board chair for the Global Partnership for Education until yesterday, with this global piece bearing her global byline in the very global Guardian.
As the former casualty of misleading Guardian headlines, I can’t scorn Gillard herself for explaining “why world leaders should listen to Rihanna”. And, no. The answer is not that Umbrella is one of the better pop songs of the 2000s. (It is.) It is because the young singer, whom Julia met in Malawi where together they taught underprivileged students that “3-0=0”, is committed to education for all of the world’s children.
That is nice. Just like it’s nice that Leonardo DiCaprio supports the Paris Climate Agreement, and that identical twin singers The Veronicas are big fans of Steve Irwin’s Wildlife Warriors.
I’m not seeking fun to make fun of Rihanna, here, who boasts both the best hair and arse in contemporary music. It may be possible that Rihanna is unusually bright. It is certainly likely that she, a Barbadian, is more aware than most advocates for global education of the urgent need for non-Western pedagogy in non-Western nations.
But this is not something that Gillard appears to be cognisant of in her Guardian piece, where she implores private and state donors to fund education in the Global South in order to ensure economic growth.
There are a few problems here with Gillard’s new global glow, not least among them that she appears to have faith that the G20 summit will ever deliver on its promise to lift the slaves of globalisation out of poverty. But let’s set my rabid internationalism aside and look at the problems Gillard’s short published promise on education for those in immiserated nations might conceal.
First, as non-Western scholars who have both studied and actively worked in the field of non-Western pedagogy have found, you can’t just teach kids in the poor bits of Africa and Asia the same curriculum taught to our issue in the West. This duplication has the effect of cultural erasure, something with which you may not have a moral problem but something that can certainly provoke local resentment over time and create divisions within the family institution.
[The surprisingly quick death of neoliberalism in Australia is underway]
As lovely as is Rihanna, there’s another young and popular woman with whom Gillard might care to partner for her own better education on education. Perhaps she’s heard of Malala Yousafzai, a young woman who consistently repeats that she will not be a tool of Western hegemony, in education practices or elsewhere. In 2013, Malala sent her message to the 32nd congress of Pakistani Marxists. After thanking them for her instruction in socialism — Malala has never thought there was any other way to grant the girls and boys of the world a good education — she noted, “We cannot wait around for anyone else to come and do it. Why are we waiting for someone else to come and fix things? Why aren’t we doing it ourselves?”
In her short piece, Gillard appears to want to come along and fix things. What she wants to create are new nations full of people able to work. Even setting aside the entire cultural erasure problem, this is a pretty shaky claim. Gillard says that nations and people that are more educated always recover better from economic distress. Which might have once been true. But is no longer true in the US where many graduates, even post-graduates, find themselves underemployed. And is no longer true in the lives of Australian people I meet. Education as a fast route to good employment, for either nations or people, has become a false promise. Ask my Uber driver last week, an Australian-born Master of Accountancy, or the lovely lady who made me 60 bucks worth of poo-emoji shaped cupcakes, a former corporate JD.
This is not, even for a nanosecond, to suggest that education is not entirely marvellous. State education worked beautifully for Gillard, and it turned out OK for me, too. We must never underestimate the natural and productive urge people of many ages have to learn new things, and learn more deeply about things, like their own culture, with which they are already familiar. But we can no longer overestimate education as a factor in economic growth.
Yes, as Gillard says, the robots are coming for our jobs. But these jobs include those in knowledge work; a sector, in any case, that the West will continue to dominate for as long as it is profitable.
Frankly, I liked her old stuff better than her new stuff. This new Global Gillard is joining the Rudd Zombie and hitching her star to an ideological wagon whose wheels have come off. If she wants legacy-preserving career advice from me — which I am positive she does not — it’d be to take a Corbynista turn. That’s what the kids are into, perhaps even more than Rihanna.
Gillard may feel in her close partnerships with liberal institutions she is ensuring her place in the future. For mine, she looks to be part of a decaying Western past.
Wonderful, Helen. A tour de force. Many memorable passages. Love your bit about the true function of Beyond Blue (or beyond Geoff, too.) I’m sure BB does wonderful stuff, like helplines and raising awareness of the incredible truth that even blokes get mental illness but sod all to address the suffering inflicted on depressives by neoliberal infected governments in so many ways including the commodification embraced by our PM as he speaks lovingly about how the market knows best how to price labour. And how it’s all essential for growth, Amen.
Global data is also cited by those tanks of thinking and lobby groups helping government underpay teachers and underfund public schools because it shows, they claim, we are not improving against PISA rankings despite all the money we are said to be spending. Just look how much more bang the Singaporeans get for their funding buck. (Especially if we overlook class and cultural factors in those results.)
Brilliant piece, thank you.
Hmm I read this twice & still can’t work out what you are complaining about. You might think I’m stupid (I’m not), but humour me anyway. Maybe some dot points?
I don’t think this comment section facilitates dot points, but perhaps I can still help:
Gillard is now a card-carrying liberal who has embraced the idea that financialised piracy couldn’t possibly have anything to do with social ills. Therefore, we should continue to raise awareness about things everyone is already aware of while policy is delegated to unaccountable transnational corporate boardrooms.
Gillard has always been a right wing card carrying liberal, she always claimed that being destitute is a good idea because ”work” is the best thing for all.
Tell me if I’m wrong, but I thought that during her tenure as PM she felt compelled to announce that she was ‘no longer a socialist’ as she was in her younger years.
You are correct, she was never a socialist though, she’s never been any thing more than another grubby ALP racist and apparatchick. Lest we forget she was numbers man during the revolving ALP leadership and helped to oust Beazley for Crean, Crean for Latham, Latham for Beazley, Beazley for Rudd and then Rudd for Gillard.
okey doke.
This is what I attempted to say, in the order it appear sin the text.
1 Rudd and Gillard weren’t the absolute worst Prime Ministers.
2 Both of them sure turned into happy clappy careerist liberals after their political careers ended. Even though happy clappy liberalism didn’t entirely inform their terms.
3 Wow, Julia is right in there with those liberal internationalists if you look into it. She’s at Brookings (a well known think tank) and she’s done the Beyondblue thing and now she is writing in the Guardian about her partnership with popstars and G20 speech on education. This is extreme liberal.
4 Has Julia thought about the consequences of the education reform she is advancing. Like, even forget that the G20 is a bunch of turds who have no genuine interest in “lifting people out of poverty”, has she looked into pedagogical (theory of teaching) research?
5 Wow, Julia, who campaigned for Hillary Clinton, is truly en route to become a bona fide liberal lass, because, no it does not appear that she is talking about culturally sensitive/useful pedagogy AND
6 She claims that education helps economic growth.
7 Education is awesome. Helen is all for it. But, no, it can no longer be said that education helps economic growth.
8 Pretty disappointed in Julia. And quite sure that she’s got a tin ear. Can’t she see that so many people in the world are turning their backs on imperialist liberalism. Why doesn’t she go make friends with Corbyn. That’s where the kids are at.
Hope this helps.
I liked both the long, explanatory, and difficult version; and the short dot point difficult version. Hurrah to you for providing both! You are an excellent teacher. Can’t see Julia employing you as such though.
Great essay, HR, as always.
I had high hopes for the first female PM. I wanted her to succeed, but alas, she turned out to be just another party apparatchik, morally identical to the long conga line of grey suits before her. I live in hope for Penny Wong, despite the difficulties of senate membership and Labor factional war lords against the notion.
The final nail in Gillard’s coffin for me was when she miraculously discovered support for gay marriage once she was turfed out of office.
These Come to Jesus moments on same-sex marriage are always repugnant to me, whether they happen in or out of office. Remember when Rudd made the statement about being Deeply Moved about a gay couple he had met in the 2013 election? Merkel, who just allowed a free vote, did it, too.
Why can’t they just say “Look. Who cares what I think? You guys obviously want it, for the most part”. No. It has to be some tedious big moral deal. Narcissists.
100% agreed on Umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, under my umbra-ella.
Also lol at “Rudd Zombie” 🙂
I watched Gillard’s interview on Lateline last night where she was asked for a critique of the current social malcontent. She responded with about 5 minutes of waffling about changing identity roles and #fakenews amidst a very brief passing mention of wealth inequality. This outlook is perfectly in keeping with her slashing of support to single mothers following her ‘misogyny’ speech. When Gillard proclaimed she was feminist and not a socialist, she sure wasn’t lying.
I think like many ex-politicians No Chiefs, she has tried everything she can to cover herself, so that she can make it look like like she has a foot in every camp, which seems to be common in what passes for the popularity contest that ex-politicians/pm’s seem to hang onto in the 24 hour media cycle. I hate to suggest it, but many ex-pollies need to move quickly for the exits after their removal from power. (if only Abbott would take the hint) With the exception of a biography 5-10 years down the track, this is really the only time that people may/or may not want to hear from them. With the exception of Paul Keating’s observations around the economy & on how badly the current government’s tinkering’s are affecting Australia’s job market/wages long term affect’s on the economy. Though I like many may have a slight tinge of nostalgia for the Rudd-Gillard days, there is little that this can contribute to what Australia is currently facing, looking down the barrel of Asian domination & breaking down of traditional economic markets & opportunities for future generations. Though none of our politicians are brave enough to acknowledge that they can’t hang onto the past in the vain hope that deep conservatism they desperately cling onto will protect the country from inevitable change, let alone articulate the realities that we as a population are facing in the future. Gillards view of education for all does have merit, protecting young women & girls from forced marriages, lowered birth rates etc. But there needs to be better & more evidence based results, more than just the fuzzy feeling for these charity organizations that are donating huge amounts of money for these programs. Gillard has a cushy number at BB & the Global Partnership in education, but it is right HR to ask what do these positions really mean to those they are supposed to help? But when does it become about looking after our own youth population educations & future, with such issues as homelessness, mental illness & family breakdown, there is so little funding going toward these very real issues in our society.