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Family Matters: Family Breakdown and its Consequences
by Patricia Morgan
New Zealand Business Roundtable, Wellington,
New Zealand
2004, $NZ 34.95
ISBN 1 877148 83 0

Reviewed by Barry Maley

Few people write as knowledgeably and accessibly about family matters as English researcher Patricia Morgan. Her publications on the subject have ranged across the economics of family life, marriage and divorce, child care, adoption, feminism and the family, the consequences of family break-up for children, and much more.

Whatever the topic, she marshalls the evidence, ponders the causal patterns and consequences, and comments on the human and policy implications with arresting insights. The book under review brings these capacities to bear upon New Zealand family life.

Morgan’s study was commissioned by the New Zealand Business Roundtable which, under executive director Roger Kerr, has adopted an unusually broad agenda of interests beyond commercial, political, and economic matters to encompass social and cultural affairs as well.
Outstanding among the latter is the parlous state of the New Zealand family. Although this is especially the case with the Maori family, the non-Maori family in New Zealand shares the same trends towards disintegration and flux as the Western family in general, and particularly its English-speaking versions. So the significance of Morgan’s findings and comments reach beyond New Zealand to be relevant to other countries, including Australia. For New Zealanders, the book is indispensable reading (despite the minor flaw of an inadequate index).

Morgan chooses as her prime criteria of family decline and fragmentation: the decrease in two-parent households, the increase in sole parents, the rise in the number of children born ex-nuptially, the decline in marriage rates, and falling fertility. She then presents the statistical evidence in time series showing the escalating incidence of these phenomena.

As in Australia, the New Zealand divorce rate quadrupled from 1961 to 2001. In New Zealand, the number of children living in sole parent households has increased by 250% in the last 35 years. This is in part a consequence of the increased divorce rate, but helped along by an increasing rate of unmarried motherhood. In 1962, ex-nuptial births were 8% of all births. By 2001 the figure was 44%—about 10% higher than the high US rate (adversely affected by the very high rate in the black American family) and about 14% higher than the Australian rate.
In 1971, the marriage rate for New Zealand women aged 16 and over was 45 per thousand. Thirty years later it was 15 per thousand. Although cohabitation, in New Zealand as in Australia, has increased rapidly since the 1970s, falling marriage rates are not fully accounted for by the rise in cohabitation.

The New Zealand fertility rate has plummeted. In 1962, the average number of children born to non-Maori women 15 and over was 4.19. In 2001, it was 2.01. Among the corresponding group of Maori women, the figure was 6.18 children per woman in 1962 and 2.5 in 2001. Although these non-Maori birth rates are slightly higher than in Australia, the rate of decline is similar.
This, briefly, is the core evidence for what Morgan calls the ‘fission in the nucleus of the family’ in New Zealand. Given some variations in the relevant figures, the overall picture is broadly comparable to what is happening throughout the English-speaking world. And, as in those countries, reactions to the figures in New Zealand frequently exhibit the same denial, dismissal, and rewriting of history about the real significance of what is happening.

Morgan quotes no less a figure than the New Zealand Minister of Social Services and Employment as urging everyone to accept that the days of the European-style family unit were long gone and being replaced by new sole-parent, reconstituted and extended families. She also quotes the Minister as saying that so long as these new types of families are ‘able to provide love, discipline and sound nurturing, things are going to be OK’.

But can such family types so provide? Often, yes; but on average, no. The presence of two biological parents in a sustained relationship makes a difference. The facts about sole parenthood forbid optimism and demand serious attention, not casual dismissal.
In Chapter 7, ‘The Consequences for Children’, Morgan details some of the huge body of research that consistently shows, across many countries and socio-economic groups, that children—especially young children—who lack the steady involvement of both biological parents in their rearing and socialisation suffer, on average, a range of disadvantages and perils.
These include: higher rates of morbidity and mortality, more accidents, and more abuse and neglect. Educational performance is lower; behavioural and mental health problems more frequent, and the likelihood of failure to form an enduring adult relationship is greater. It is worth noting that the presence of a step-parent or a boyfriend instead of the natural father can often be a particular hazard.

It is frequently claimed that therelatively low income of sole parents is a major cause of such problems rather than the absence of one of the biological parents; with the corollary that if only the state provided more welfare the problems would disappear. American research, controlling for parental income and social class, has shown little or no relationship between income and child outcomes in sole parent families. Morgan quotes the Western Australian Child Health Survey (one of the best of its kind) that showed a significant increase in mental health problems among children in sole parent families, but family income was not significant in predicting child mental health status.

The major conclusions, then, are that family structure makes a difference to family process, that an enduring partnership is a fundamental structural requirement, and that a two-natural-parent structure works better, on average, than a sole parent family or a two-parent family with only one natural parent, other things remaining equal. This leads Morgan on to the issue which has recently been receiving a lot of attention—the monitoring, supervising and providing role of the (natural) father and the regrettable consequences of his absence and reduced participation after divorce or separation.

While New Zealand family structure, family dysfunction and family violence (especially among Maoris), and their consequences form the core of Morgan’s study, there is a great deal beyond that. Declining fertility, for example, is discussed but not dealt with at length; wisely perhaps, since it raises a complex of puzzles deserving a book of its own. Nevertheless, Morgan has a useful discussion of family taxation which, in bearing upon the costs of raising children, is directly relevant to that subject.

She gives particular attention to marriage as the institution that has, traditionally, been the linchpin of family structure, and the rapid emergence of cohabitation as its easily-dispensed substitute. From there, she goes on to look at the communal and social repercussions—such as crime, juvenile delinquency, and the perverse poverty traps of welfare—that are linked to the breakdown of marriage and the fluidity of family commitments.

All of this, she claims, is followed by the feedback loops and spiral of decline that flow from inadequately socialised and neglected children and men unattached to family responsibilities and work. At the end of this unhappy road is the deterioration in the nation’s human capital and a society bereft of a tradition of enduring heterosexual coupling and the responsible rearing of children.

The book accordingly concludes by stressing the need for public policies focused on promoting family stability and centred on the crucial roles of marriage and appropriate family law.

The Case For an Australian Bill of Rights: Freedom in the War on Terror
by George Williams
Sydney, UNSW Press, 2004 95pp, $16.95
ISBN 0 86840 767 4

Reviewed by Matthew Stubbs

In this book, George Williams makes a strong argument in favour of the adoption of an Australian Bill of Rights. Against the background of recent debates concerning the legitimacy of intrusions against human rights in the context of mandatory sentencing for property offences, the treatment of asylum seekers, legislative responses to the threat of terrorist attack and the continuing deprivations suffered by many of Australia’s Indigenous populations, Williams reviews the experience thus far and proposes a Bill of Rights as a necessary and desirable development for Australia.

The author is a professor of law, but this book is not an exhaustive and rigorous academic assessment of the issues involved. It is clearly aimed at a much broader market, and is an affordable, approachable summary of many of the relevant issues in the Bill of Rights debate. Whilst this may disappoint those looking for a more advanced and detailed scholarly analysis, it does have the great benefit of making this book more accessible to the general public. This attribute is surely necessary in a book aiming to improve the quality and extent of community debate surrounding this important issue.

The book is divided into a series of somewhat disparate chapters that nevertheless build to an effective conclusion. The opening offering, ‘Questions Without Answers,’ illustrates two concerns which are central to the argument as a whole. First, without a Bill of Rights there is insufficient protection of the human rights of Australians, which are thus left largely to the whims of political discourse. Second, the quality of political debate itself is lessened because of the absence of a suitable frame of reference within which to consider human rights issues.
Later chapters of the book expand on these two issues. The theme of insufficient protection of human rights is explored in detail in chapters which analyse Australia’s past record on human rights and the existing legal protections of human rights in Australia. Issues relating to the quality of political debate are borne out most clearly in the chapter dealing with the Australian response to the threat of terrorism, where Willams draws attention to the danger that, in the absence of a Bill of Rights, ‘the contours of debate may match the majoritarian pressures of political life rather than the principles and values on which our democracy depends.’

Having made its case for a Bill of Rights, the final part of the book considers how this recommendation can be translated into reality. Following a chapter dealing with the history of failed attempts to introduce a Bill of Rights, Williams considers the first Australian Bill of Rights, the Human Rights Act of the ACT, which entered into force on 1 July 2004. Describing the ACT Bill of Rights as, ‘a promising start,’ Williams’ proposed Bill of Rights is clearly influenced by the juxtaposition of the grand failures of the past with the success of the more, ‘modest and incremental’, ACT approach.

The Bill of Rights proposed by Williams is a hybrid which incorporates elements of the Bills of Rights adopted in Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. The key features of the proposed Bill of Rights are that it would be a legislative act of the Commonwealth Parliament, rather than a constitutional amendment made directly by the Australian people; it would provide for courts to strike down legislation inconsistent with the rights protected, but only in the last resort if inconsistency could not be avoided; and would militate against concerns of judicial dominance by providing for explicit legislative power to override its provisions if Parliament considered it necessary to do so.

Williams illustrates why these are natural choices for the Australian context, sensitive to our constitutional arrangements and experiences. The proposal for a legislative Bill of Rights is an openly pragmatic one, adopted in light of the history of unsuccessful attempts at a constitutional Bill of Rights. The proposed judicial power of declaring legislation invalid in the event of unavoidable inconsistency represents a role not greatly different to the role the High Court has performed in constitutional interpretation for over a century. The proposed legislative power of overriding the Bill of Rights when considered necessary to do so is a strong protection against judicial abuse of the power of invalidation and ensures that power ultimately remains in the hands of the elected representatives of the people.

The book discusses a series of headline injustices, including the imprisonment of a 21 year old for one year for the theft of cordial and biscuits valued at $23 under the mandatory sentencing legislation in the Northern Territory. There is a risk that mainstream opinion will not be moved by the example of injustices which are committed primarily against minority groups. One answer to this was suggested by Thomas Paine, who declared that:

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

In the concluding passages of his book, Williams makes a broader argument which links back to the earlier theme about the potential for a Bill of Rights to improve the quality of domestic political debate, pointing out that, ‘the most important contribution a Bill of Rights can make is not the benefit it brings to the small number of people who succeed in invoking rights in court.’ The true benefit lies in the capacity of a Bill of Rights to contribute to an effective framework within which society as a whole can resolve human rights issues which impact on the underlying principles of our liberal democratic society.

In the end, a Bill of Rights must be the product of a determination by the Australian people to protect those human rights which are fundamental to our society. In this book, which has the capacity to make an important contribution toward broader community understanding of the issues involved, George Williams presents a strong case for an Australian Bill of Rights.

Finishing the Job: Real-World Policy Solutions in Health, Housing, Education and Transport
by Joshua Gans and Stephen King
Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 2004
142pp, $29.95
ISBN 0 522 85146 0

Reviewed by Rajat Sood

The Howard Government’s re-election has raised expectations of a renewed focus on economic reform. It is therefore timely that Joshua Gans and Stephen King, two well-known Australian microeconomists, have written a book that develops policy proposals for housing, health, education and transport, which are all sectors that could benefit from reform.
The authors make a number of worthy points. Funding of health and education services can and should be separated from management and provision. The first homebuyers’ grant is a waste of money. Parents should have greater freedom in school choice. Congestion charging for roads would promote more efficient urban transport decisions. While hardly novel, most market-minded reformers would readily agree with these propositions.

It is at the next level of detail, where problems and policies are explained, that the book begins to trouble even sympathetic readers.

For example, the chapter on housing proposes a ‘housing lifeline’ to provide modest loans in cases where average household income is sufficient to meet housing costs, but the household sometimes lacks funds to meet rent or mortgage commitments. Amounts borrowed could be repaid on an income-contingent HECS-style basis.

Yet the reader is left wondering how it would be possible to limit the lifeline to those who fit Gans and King’s criteria. Almost all those who are long-term unemployed once had a job, so it is unclear how the Government could reliably distinguish between recently-unemployed people who were undergoing short-term housing stress and those that would have longer-term problems. Moreover, even if such a distinction could be made, it is unlikely that there is a market failure in the provision of short-term credit to such people, given the easy availability of credit cards, some with initial low interest rate periods.

The strong impression given by the housing chapter is that Gans and King have sought to use a novel extension of the HECS idea to solve a problem that does not need solving.

The key proposal from the health chapter is for public insurance (Medicare) to cover a basic level of care at whichever hospital—public or private—can provide the service at the best price, with no ability for any hospital to levy additional charges for the ‘basic’ service. Meanwhile, private insurance would only cover ‘procedures or services not covered by public insurance’, thereby becoming a supplement to, rather than a substitute for, public insurance.

The question this raises in the reader’s mind is what is the ‘basic service’ and by implication, what is privately insurable? Is choice of doctor or private room an ‘additional service’? What about ‘queue-jumping’ for elective surgery?

The book is by no means clear on the answers to these questions. If the answers were yes, Gans and King’s proposal would effectively result in a hospital voucher scheme, where patients would be free to add to the Government’s subsidy to seek better or more prompt service. This could be a worthwhile change, but it would be likely to result in more ‘queue-jumping’ than presently occurs, with implications for equity and the universal service principle. The authors do not address or acknowledge these issues.

On the other hand, if private insurance only covered services that were not provided by Medicare at all, it would be limited to current ancillary treatments (dental, physiotherapy, psychology, etc), cosmetic surgery and fertility treatments. The result would be a health system much closer to the British National Health Service.

The authors provide little empirical support for their analysis. For example, they suggest that the key problem with the current health system is that high-risk individuals (the ‘old sick’) who buy private insurance cross-subsidise the public health services provided to low-risk individuals (the ‘young well’). Given the still largely intact policy of community rating for private health insurance—which itself is never questioned—this assertion requires data to justify.
The authors also claim the current system is inequitable, because it allows the ‘young rich’ to receive the same public health benefits as the poor. However, given that individuals earning more than $50,000 per annum without private health insurance are subject to the 1% Medicare surcharge on gross income, this claim also appears unsubstantiated.

The education chapter also suffers from confusing explanation. While the discussion on the conventional reasons for government intervention in education is helpful, the authors claim that these conventional reasons do not explain the level and type of intervention we observe. Rather, governments intervene because education is a ‘club good’, a good that is most efficiently provided to a group. However, they go on to say that markets tend to provide fairly efficient levels of club goods, making the reader question the analytical value of the five pages devoted to this concept.

Gans and King’s main education proposal is for a modified school voucher scheme, where the Government provides a ‘differential allowance’ for each child’s tuition based on family income that does not discriminate between public and private schools. Schools could choose to charge fees higher than the basic allowance and parents would be able to supplement the allowance through ‘top-up’ fees, which could also be ‘taxed’ by the Government to meet equity objectives.
While this proposal would improve the transparency of education funding, it would be likely to entrench anti-work incentives, an issue that has recently received much attention in the welfare reform debate. A parent considering working more to spend on her child’s education is taxed once on income earned, effectively a second time through the provision of a differential per-student allowance (based on family income) and a third time by the tax on top-up fees. In the health chapter, the authors argue persuasively that ‘the use of the health insurance system as an income redistribution device is bad economics’ and that assistance to the poor should instead be provided transparently. However, they do not apply this commendable approach to their own education proposal.

Incidentally, the housing lifeline is another proposal that could reduce incentives to work.
Finally, while the transport chapter usefully points out that road congestion has costs that should be priced, it makes some proposals that appear to be based on questionable analysis. Gans and King suggest that public transport fares should be set below marginal passenger costs to reflect the ‘external benefits’ of public transport, such as reducing road congestion and pollution. But if congestion is priced through the proposed congestion charge and petrol is taxed sufficiently to reflect pollution costs (as it may already be), such benefits will already be internalised by commuters and further subsidisation of public transport would be unnecessary and inefficient.

Data should also have been provided to support the proposition that current public transport fares are ‘well above’ marginal cost.

On balance, implementing Gans and King’s proposals would probably incrementally improve on the status quo in the sectors they consider. However, the authors could have taken greater care in developing and explaining their ideas and could certainly have suggested bolder reforms.

The Geopolitics of East Asia: The Search for Equilibrium
by Robyn Lim
Routledge, London, 2003
198 pp, $89.00
ISBN 0 415297 176

Reviewed by Neil James

Professor Robyn Lim, an Australian, holds the chair in international relations at Nanzan University in Japan. Prior to this she held posts with the Office of National Assessments, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and at various Australian and South-East Asian universities.

In a time of strategic flux and the relative decline of ideology as a major cause of strategic friction, The Geopolitics of East Asia, and the message of its subtitle, provide a timely reminder of the geo-strategic tectonic plates underlying the East Asian region irrespective of the ideologies, personalities or diplomatic fads of any particular time.

The book’s thesis is that the geopolitics of East Asia has several underlying themes of geostrategic continuity underwritten by geography, economics, culture and the continual search for strategic balance between the great powers since the 17th century. A key argument deployed is that there is an East Asian quadrilateral compromising Russia, China, Japan and the United States, and that the tensions between them result from the quest for equilibrium irrespective of their comparative strengths or the ideologies governing each one at any particular juncture.
This is a daunting task in a book the publishers specified must come in under 80,000 words. Professor Lim accomplishes her aim with an introductory essay, five historical chapters, a chapter covering contemporary issues and a conclusion. All include the broad perspectives, incisive analysis and forthright language that make Professor Lim stand out among what often passes for contemporary tenured academic thought and discourse. While a book of this length on such a broad topic must, of necessity, include much synthesised content her summaries also feature original observations that add to our understanding of the broad and bold themes explored.

Chapter 1 discusses East Asian history from the beginning of the 16th century to the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905 following Japan’s defeat of Russia. In her second chapter Professor Lim discusses the unstable balance in East Asia between 1905 and the mid 1930s that led, almost inexorably, to World War II. The strategic contest between Japan and the United States, egged on by Stalinist Russia, is covered in Chapter 3 with most of the discussion centering on the contests of the 1935-41 period, rather than the detail of the cross-ocean maritime campaigns that destroyed Japanese power over the ensuing four years.

The final two chapters cover the Cold War. The penultimate summarises the myriad political currents swirling round decolon-isation, the rise of communist aggression and the resultant offensive and defensive wars to contain it. The last discusses the latter phases of the Cold War from the West’s defeat in Vietnam to its eventual triumph over the Soviet Union (and belligerent Maoist zealotry) by the late 1980s.

In the final chapter Professor Lim touches with a sure hand on most of the major contemporary strategic issues, developments and trends. These include the seemingly perpetual misunderstandings between China and Japan; the various unification imperatives, WMD threats and intelligence gathering complications stemming from the division of Korea; the continuing strategic and moral dilemmas over Taiwan; the effects of the Islamist terrorist threat on great power cooperation overall; and China’s strategic ambitions in its surrounding seas, South-East Asia and the western Pacific.

In her conclusion she notes that fluctuations among the powers comprising the quadrilateral can be expected to continue and neatly pierces several recurring myths and delusions that reinforce the quest for diplomatic certainties and comfort rather than a propensity to confront this and other strategic realities. Professor Lim warns that growing economic interdependence, the spread of democracy and multilateralist urges will not necessarily guarantee stability and peace in the region or more broadly. She also counsels against neoisolationist urges in the US, and the doubtful opposing beliefs that enduring strategic accommodation between the US and China is either inherently unobtainable or can be easily achieved.

The 14 pages of notes buttress the high standard of the book overall. As well as the usual citations they include numerous brief explanations and the background to issues that would otherwise clutter the main text. The five-page bibliography is comprehensive. It is also laid out in a format that is easily readable, an increasingly uncommon phenomenon in modern publishing. Finally the eight-page index is effective in a work of this length, especially in a subject area bedevilled by changes in the historical usages of spelling foreign names among two alphabets and three character systems.

Professor Lim has, however, been badly let down by her publisher in regard to the only two maps, both small but large-scale, monochrome versions. One covers, on one page, the region bounded by northern Australia, the Arctic Ocean, Moscow and the Aleutians. The other depicts the North-East Asian region centred on Manchuria. Both maps are marked with small print but still fail to detail or otherwise easily indicate many of the locations mentioned in the text. A work on geopolitics requires clearly drawn, readable and comprehensive maps, not the third-rate versions offered here.

The Geopolitics of East Asia, within its limitations of size and requirement for summary rather than detail, is a masterful work. Its occasional oversimplification invokes the odd twinge of reflexive counter argument but the book contains no obvious or serious errors of fact. This is a book which has the sure touch of both an unbowed practitioner and a scholar, and in both cases one comfortable with the milieu of debate in North America and North Asia rather than just Australian perspectives. It should be required background reading for Australian diplomats, strategists and senior commanders and those who aspire to otherwise comment on Australia’s national strategy.

One final question the book generates is why Professor Lim has not been snapped up by a university or think-tank in her own country. She would certainly be a breath of fresh air in a country where strategic debate at an academic and wider level has greatly suffered from an insufficient turnover of participants over the last three decades, and more recently a marked degree of intellectual atrophy. Perhaps her reputation for being a somewhat hard-edged critic of the academically complacent has told against her. On the evidence of The Geopolitics of East Asia, Australia is much the worse for her apparent intellectual exile.

The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100: Europe, America and the
Third World
by Robert William Fogel
Cambridge University Press, New York, 2004
216 pages, US$24
ISBN 0 521 00488 8

Reviewed by Eric Kodjo Ralph

This short book, written by a Nobel laureate in economics, is a fascinating read, dealing with issues of long-run macro-level importance. I doubt any book published this year has as many astonishing facts and convincingly argued assertions per page.

The book consists of two concise and important essays (Chapters 1-3 and Chapters 4-5) and a postscript, each of which can almost be read independently. The first essay convincingly links, over the last three centuries, dramatic developments in the availability of calories and essential nutrients in some developed nations to significant improvements in the average health and longevity of those nations’ populations. The result has been an extraordinary increase in the capacity of the average person to engage in work and pleasure, leading to substantial increases in productivity and reductions in inequality. This in turn, Fogel emphasises, has synergistically facilitated better average access to calories and nutrients.

Fogel’s second essay looks at the implications for healthcare in the light of the long-term changes just discussed. Fogel argues that we should not be concerned about, but rather expect and welcome, dramatic increases in healthcare expenditures. In a society as productive as those of the developed nations, expenditure on food, shelter, and work-saving devices in the home amounts to a relatively small proportion of average total income. Consequently, people want to spend more time and money on leisure and health. In Fogel’s view, removing constraints on individuals’ ability to spend more on health can foster a health revolution that (again synergistically) will drive economic growth in the next century. Fogel also makes a strong case that growth in demand for healthcare in developing nations such as India and China will lead to much greater growth in expenditures, as a percent of total output, than in developed nations.

The second essay is also concerned with inequality in healthcare. Specifically, Fogel argues that the US should increase: pre- and post-natal care, especially for poor single mothers; targeted education of those poorly informed in health matters; periodic health screening in schools through to year 12, especially in poor neighbourhoods; convenient access to public health clinics in underserved poor neighbourhoods, as without ready access, even the insured do not use healthcare facilities; and international health aid.

Interestingly, Fogel does not see the large percent of uninsured Americans as being a substantive problem. Instead, the issue is inequality of access, which he argues convincingly would not be solved by increasing insurance coverage. Moreover, he notes that merely increasing insurance coverage by taxation would be largely regressive. (On a personal note, my nearly 15 years as an insured individual in the US compares unfavourably to what I experienced in Australia between 1973 and 1990 in three respects not addressed by Fogel: high personal administrative costs in dealing with insurance companies, doctors and hospitals; lack of access to healthcare facilities outside of weekdays between 9 and 5; and gross unfairness when it comes to debilitating illness—a 17 year old girl diagnosed with multiple sclerosis becomes essentially uninsurable unless she can land a job with a large and generous corporation or government body).

Fogel’s postscript concerns the extent to which longevity increases are likely to continue. He takes the optimistic view that the linear increases experienced in the last 300 years will continue over the next 100 years. On that basis, the average life expectancy of a woman born in 2070 would be about 97 years. It would have been nice to see evidence beyond extrapolation (of both actual increases in longevity and in the underestimation of these by the experts of the day). For example, comparisons of the life span of animals such as genetically similar feral dogs, pets and show dogs, could provide additional evidence on what lifetime extension better environments might bring.

The book’s first ‘essay’ is the most demanding and occasionally frustrating. This is where Fogel’s professional expertise lies, and yet, putting aside the section’s over-arching themes, it is where the reader repeatedly has doubts about various propositions advanced. Nor does it help that Fogel repeatedly cites an unpublished work still in progress. Let me provide two examples that are interesting and important, though not critical to Fogel’s basic arguments.
Fogel takes the view that the ideal average height for males is perhaps well over 190 cm. A good deal of Fogel’s evidence for this comes from military records. However, he does not discuss whether there might be some endogeneity in this finding. In particular, relative rather than absolute height differences could play a role. For example, it may be that bigger men, especially those in the military, are marginally less likely to get into fights or otherwise be hurt, leading to greater longevity. Similarly, some evidence suggests that relatively tall men are more likely to be married and earn higher incomes than other men. Marriage and income are known to play a role in longevity.

Fogel also provides fascinating discussion on a controversy about ideal body size, concluding that, on average, small is unlikely to be healthy. While the evidence he presents from the US and northern Europe is compelling, it contains no data from Japan, where one suspects data exists. This seems a curious omission. The Japanese are among the longest living people in the world. I would guess, from casual observation, that, with the possible exception of today’s Japanese children, Japanese are on average smaller than their American and European counterparts (even after excluding those who are overweight). Moreover, Japan is the most affluent Asian nation, making it a good comparator with America and Europe. Consequently, examining the Japanese data could conclusively support or negate Fogel’s view.

Fogel’s demonstration of the main points in the first section of the book also gets a little lost in the details. For example, he makes the staggering claim that the increase in accessible calories between 1790 and today accounts for 30% of the British growth rate over the same period. Yet I did not appreciate why this was likely true until I had pieced together information found in later chapters (such as on the extraordinary increase in the average working life access to adequate nutrition allowed).

Some quibbles in ending: This book desperately needed an editor. It uses inches, centimetres and metres interchangeably. It employs complex graphs that are difficult to read and with thought (in some cases very little—see Figure 3.1) could have been made more readable. It relies on endnotes instead of footnotes, despite having 1.6 notes per page. Surely not because footnotes scare off the general reader? Anyone frightened of footnotes will be terrified of the first 20 pages of this book.

The Persuaders: Inside the Hidden Machine of Political Advertising
by Sally Young
Sydney, Pluto Press, 2004
404pp, $34.95
ISBN 1 86403 304 5

Reviewed by Peter van Onselen, Edith Cowan University

The study of political advertising and its impact on democracy is a growth industry. It interests observers of politics as well as university students studying political science. Sally Young, who currently lectures in media and communications at the University of Melbourne, is at the forefront of its scholarly study. She completed a PhD on political advertising in Australia (1949-2001) in 2003 and has also written widely on the subject, including in the Australian Journal of Political Science. The Persuaders: Inside the Hidden Machine of Political Advertising is her latest contribution.

Young’s study is well researched and supported by a range of primary and secondary literature. One of the book’s most valuable aspects for a political science readership is the quality of the reference list contained in the bibliography (p.365). She clearly spent many hours reviewing National Library of Australia collections for each of the major parties.

Given the insiders nature of Australian major parties, academics generally find it very difficult to ascertain what really goes on in party backrooms. Young has an insider story of her own to tell. She confesses to having worked as a Labor Party volunteer in the lead up to the 2001 federal election and the 2002 Victorian state election (p.3). Her experience was one of being shut out, unable to get near the action. Sadly this is a typical sensation for new entrants into the world of political staffing/volunteering. On both sides of politics it is often not what you know but who you know.

Young’s experiences clearly left her with a story to tell—that of the difficulty ordinary citizens have in engaging with their elected representatives or the parties they operate within. My own academic research reveals that on both sides of the ideological divide the pre-parliamentary jobs of major party MPs are increasingly as Ministerial staffers and central party operatives, further isolating politics in the world of nepotism (unless you are a local community type in a marginal seat—in which case the professional party machine can see your electioneering benefits). Of course this is not the whole story, but Young highlights a concerning trend.

The title, The Persuaders: Inside the Hidden Machine of Political Advertising , is borrowed from Vance Packard’s 1957 book The Hidden Persuaders, which examined how advertisers seek to manipulate consumers. In Australia, Stephen Mills pioneered the study of professional political practice in Australia, including the role of campaigning and advertising, with his 1986 text The New Machine Men. Young’s account is a long overdue update of campaigning and advertising tactics used by political parties in Australia.

The book is broken into 13 chapters. The first chapter details the revolution in campaign tactics adopted by the Whitlam Labor Opposition in its successful 1972 ‘It’s time’ campaign. That campaign used celebrity comment, musical renditions and slick commercial advertising. Young contends that the Whitlam years started an arms race in campaign spending. She also alludes to a loss of substance in political advertising. She quotes a Laurie Oakes comment that 1972 was the year of the ‘soft-sell’ (p.21). It is an engaging and interesting entrée to the chapters ahead.

Young briefly traces the evolution of political advertising on radio, cinema, newspapers and television. Broadcast advertising in Australian federal elections grew by 900% from 1974 to 1996. No doubt this figure has substantially increased since then. Young’s analysis would have benefited from a direct response to the argument, often put by political parties, that their spending is but a fraction of commercial advertising campaigns. The rise in political advertising spending may be less alarming if the base from which it started was an unprofessional low.
Chapters three and four are perhaps the most valuable in the book. They address the rise and rise of the swinging voter, and the question of whether Australia is descending into a PR state. Major parties try to avoid wasting their funds raised (and apportioned from public funding) on voters whose minds are firmly fixed on either party. Saving the cost of a postage stamp may seem trivial in isolation, but the savings from a swinging voter strategy across the country are in the millions of dollars.

Compulsory voting in Australia removes the need to ‘get out the vote’ that exists in the US. Political parties can therefore, to some extent, take their own supporters for granted, as well as ignore the entrenched voters of the other lot. So much for ‘governing for all of us’! Young laments that parties don’t just focus on swinging voters, they focus even more narrowly, on swinging voters in marginal seats.

The PR state chapter canvasses increased use of political databases to track voters, their policy preferences, and most importantly their voting preferences. In identifying the rise of databases Young highlights direct mail’s central importance to modern campaigning. Heavily subsidised by parliamentary entitlements, direct mail assists incumbents over competing candidates, both before elections are called and during the campaign itself. Young concludes that parties are becoming obsessed with the marketing side of politics, arguably at the expense of policy development and good governance.

The following chapters focus the reader’s attention specifically on the advertising campaigns of major parties, including public funding, invasion of privacy and stretching of the truth in campaigning. Young concludes there is a need for urgent reforms, and she outlines them in her final chapter. Her 18 recommendations for reform are reasonable in principle, but she perhaps should have spent more time developing a planned approach to achieving such reforms, including the framework by which they would be instituted. Such a practical strategy for implementation of reforms would strengthen her criticism of the status quo.

Importantly, Young has not written The Persuaders as a purely academic account. On the contrary, large parts of it border on polemic. This is not meant as a criticism. In places the author embarks on a crusade to uncover unethical and arguably illegal activities by both major parties. Doing so in a readable popular style helps to engage a wider reading audience.
I recommend The Persuaders: Inside the Hidden Machine of Political Advertising as an interesting, well-researched read. It has the dual benefit of appealing to a general and specialised readership. But I can see the lighter side of politicians and their advertising pitches, and fortunately I think voters still can as well. The dangers of political manipulation Young highlights are present, but perhaps they are yet to reach the alarming heights she suggests.

Well May We Say: The Speeches That Made Australia
by Sally Warhaft, (ed.)
Black Inc, Melbourne,
2004, $34.95
ISBN 1 86395 277 2

Reviewed by Greg Melleuish

Australian speeches appear to be the flavour of the month. This collection is but one of three currently on the market. This is odd given that the speech delivered to a public audience does not occupy a very significant place in the public life in this country. The last election in which a leader of a political party actually addressed a genuine public audience (as opposed to the stage managed audiences of a campaign launch) was in 1993. Television, the managed campaign and the need for an appropriate sound bite have all but destroyed the public speech. Hence it appeared somewhat quaint when Mark Latham, prior to the last election campaign, went around the country holding consultative sessions and delivering public speeches.

The contemporary ‘speeches’ in this collection have nearly all been delivered as radio talks or as specialist lectures to relatively small audiences. With one possible exception, Pauline Hanson’s maiden parliamentary speech, they have hardly been speeches that ‘made’ Australia. In fact many of the speeches, such as Whitlam’s ‘Well may we say’ are little more than a few off the cuff remarks. What has come to occupy a place in Australian public life are less the speeches than a small number of phrases in these speeches such as ‘black armband’ or ‘All the way with LBJ’ or ‘I did but see her passing by’.

The role of the speech in Australian public life remains somewhat of a paradox. In the ancient world it was quite common for speeches to be preserved, and much of the literature that we have from the age of Athenian democracy are speeches including, of course, those delivered by Socrates and Demosthenes. Equally the speeches of Cicero from the late Roman Republic have been preserved. In the ancient world oratory was a central part of the education of upper class males and they needed models to emulate.

This does not mean that Cicero actually delivered every speech in his collection or that the speeches were delivered as written. Rather we have the polished final product that men could admire and emulate. Of course what is missing from any such final product is the performance, the drama that the circumstances accompanying the original delivery of the speech provided. One thinks of Cicero delivering his speech in the Senate against the Catiline conspiracy, wearing armour under his toga to accentuate that his life had been threatened.

Greece and Rome both had cultures that gave a primacy to the spoken word and in which people took enormous pleasure in listening to great oratory. This was also true in societies derived from an Anglo background until quite recently. In 19th century Australia the capacity to deliver good speeches was still important. Election campaigns, for example, were an opportunity for candidates to indulge their oratorical capabilities in front of audiences that may or may not have been friendly.

Judging from contemporary reports, the decade before Federation was the golden age of Australian oratory, both in parliament and without. No doubt the Federation campaign spurred on the art of making speeches. It is odd that this collection does not contain a specimen of George Reid’s oratory. Despite a high-pitched voice, Reid was meant to have been a speaker who developed a genuine rapport with audience. One might have expected Reid’s debate with William Holman on Socialism held in 1906 before a large audience to have been represented in such a collection.

As the twentieth century advanced, so oratory and the art of speech making became less important in Australia. First radio and later television transformed the way politics was conducted. Oratory thrives on personal contact between the speaker and his or her audience. This is exemplified by the well known example of Bob Menzies who seemed to need an interjector or two before he could warm up and move into full flight.

Menzies is also an excellent illustration of why collections of written speeches have only limited value. To appreciate a Menzies speech we really need to hear the man, to get a sense of his presence. Of course the same is true of actors: the text of Henry V tells us nothing of Lawrence Olivier’s performance in the role of the same name.

We encounter an even bigger problem in the case of recent political speeches. Not only are we faced with mere words on the page but the reality that the person who spoke the words probably did not write them. This creates a puzzle: in such circumstances what is the relationship between the speaker and what he or she is saying?

We live in an age in which oratory does not thrive. Schoolchildren do not study speeches intensively in the hope of becoming great orators. Technology does not favour long and artfully constructed orations.

What then does this collection of speeches represent? To me it read a little like a collection of documents, some of which one might set as readings for a tutorial. There were too many fragments in the collection. Most certainly I would not go to it seeking models if I wished to indulge in a little speech making myself. And even worse, there are two other collections out there.

To me, it would make more sense to put together a CD of Australian speeches so that we could hear them. But I fear that this current collection comes not to praise the art of speech making in Australia but to bury it.

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