Australia is losing cultural institutions untied to the ‘logic of profit’, say Crikey readers

Andrew Bonnell writes: This also holds for university restructures. Usually, when a university wishes to cut positions, it is required by its enterprise agreement to consult before it does anything else, and to engage in a process of investigating possible options with affected staff and the union. Forced redundancies should be a last resort. This process can be circumvented if staff are on fixed-term contracts which were going to expire, or if MUP is not actually covered by the university agreement because it is considered an “associated entity”.

Whichever the case, it is abysmally poor practice to act as Melbourne University has done, and it is not surprising that there is speculation about the motives.

AP7 writes: This is sad news and another illustration of how activity not geared to market transactions is slowly being marginalised and closed down. Universities and churches are two institutions that predate modern capitalism, and offer activities and products not built around a logic of profit. Public universities have been progressively hollowed out and converted into businesses for a long time, greatly accelerated from the Dawkins reforms in the late 1980s.

I had the honour of being shortlisted for the position of editor of Meanjin many, many years ago. I lost out to Ian Britain, and there was certainly no shame in that. While providing a wonderful space for exploring Australia and its identity via literature, Meanjin was more than that. It was one of those places where the Australian public mind developed, grew and reflected upon itself. 

And if we want to talk of subsidies, the wealth of unpaid or low-paid contributions over the years, painstakingly worked over by the writers and their editors, largely just to contribute to the life of the mind, was, literally, beyond price.

As an archive, the Meanjin volumes will remain a national treasure.

Alex Swann writes: Is it just a part of being in your 40s that there is this daily sense of the old world that you knew and loved slipping away, like a forest being cut down tree by tree when you hoped that it would in fact continue to bloom and grow more and more magnificent until after you’d gone? Beause that’s what everything about the world feels like to me at the moment.

KSN writes: Paul Keating’s comments about the Senate being unrepresentative swill come to mind. Price and Hume are from the Senate and don’t have to worry about the damage they are causing and can indulge in virtue signalling to the nativists. Alex Hawke and co in the house are acutely aware of the damage being inflicted on their electoral prospects. The Indian community is substantial and growing in suburban seats like his. 

At this rate, the Liberals are locking themselves out of large swaths of suburbia. You are already seeing conservative-leaning independents coming second in seats like Blaxland. We are heading towards fragmentation of the right because the Liberal senators just couldn’t help themselves.

Peter C writes: This is exactly like targeting the Greeks and Italians in the 1950s and 1960s. It was unwise then, and even more unwise to target the Indo-Australian community now.

The Indo-Australian community is doing the work Australians refuse to do, e.g. working in our hospitals and nursing homes; being our truck and bus drivers, taxi and Uber delivery drivers; building our homes; staffing our 24-hour convenience stores; cleaning our homes, offices, medical facilities and shopping centres; and processing our pathology and radiography. Without the Indian community, Australia could not function.

It is very similar to the Greek and Italian communities of six decades ago, and just like these previous communities, they are sending their kids to university to become our accountants, doctors, engineers, lawyers and scientists. We should be thankful to the Indian community for working so hard and enriching our lives, and reminding us of the value of family, just as we are now thankful for previous generations of Greeks and Italians.

Mike Sprange writes: Australia’s proposed weakening of freedom of information laws represents exactly what’s wrong with our political system: major parties prioritising power over transparency.

This retreat from openness stems from two fundamental problems. First, lobbyists enjoy privileged access to government, successfully steering policy away from public interest while operating largely in shadow. Second, both major parties suffer from dangerous overconfidence in their governance abilities, treating transparency as inconvenience rather than democratic necessity.

Opposition parties focus more on political damage than honest policy debate. Governments respond by prioritising secrecy over good governance. The result? Citizens lose access to information that should rightfully be theirs.

This is precisely why I’ve supported independents in recent elections. The crossbench provides essential pressure for better governance standards. David Pocock’s push to tighten lobbyist access demonstrates the kind of reform we need — and that major parties resist delivering themselves.

We need governments to govern and independents to demand higher standards. Most importantly, we need voters to recognise that giving major parties unchecked power actually diminishes government quality.

As Don Chipp once urged: “Keep the bastards honest.” Today, that means using crossbench MPs to force transparency reforms like protecting — not weakening — our FOI laws.