WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.920 Welcome everyone to this, the ultimate episode in this year's Festival of Ideas. 2 00:00:05.800 --> 00:00:10.640 My name is Robert Fideon and I'm chair of the festival and thank you very much for coming. 3 00:00:12.340 --> 00:00:19.940 It's been a wonderful couple of days and here we're here to talk about shame, 4 00:00:20.340 --> 00:00:27.740 which I think in some ways is the pointy end of the free speech debate that has been one of the threads through the festival. 5 00:00:27.740 --> 00:00:33.140 And we have some fine speakers whom I'll introduce individually before they speak. 6 00:00:34.200 --> 00:00:38.420 Some of us will stand, some of us will sit, so you'll just have to get used to the idea of the variation. 7 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:47.780 But by way of introduction, I think I'll indulge myself momentarily. 8 00:00:48.280 --> 00:00:52.100 I have an interest in satire, that's where I come from in this debate. 9 00:00:52.300 --> 00:00:57.620 So shaming people who are shameless is something I think is certainly appealing. 10 00:00:58.820 --> 00:01:05.840 And I hope to discover in the course of the afternoon that it's also morally justifiable. 11 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:07.920 But I'm not sure I'm going to get away with that one. 12 00:01:08.880 --> 00:01:15.980 And what we do when we organise a festival with all these panel sessions is come up with the title 13 00:01:15.980 --> 00:01:22.840 and then we try and write a couple of hundred words to give to the speakers. 14 00:01:23.360 --> 00:01:27.160 And I've been doing this now for a decade, trying to write these couple of hundred words. 15 00:01:27.280 --> 00:01:27.720 So I'm going to try and do that. 16 00:01:27.740 --> 00:01:28.880 Session notes, I call them. 17 00:01:29.080 --> 00:01:35.580 And it's a very odd writing experience because here you are on topics usually where I know very little, 18 00:01:36.440 --> 00:01:38.680 writing to people who know an awful lot. 19 00:01:39.760 --> 00:01:43.400 So what I try and do is come up with a... 20 00:01:44.820 --> 00:01:49.520 It's not that difficult actually in a way, come up with an idiot's view of the topic 21 00:01:49.520 --> 00:01:54.240 and ask the questions that I think people will have. 22 00:01:54.380 --> 00:01:56.740 So this is what I wrote about this one. 23 00:01:59.180 --> 00:02:00.100 You're disgusting. 24 00:02:00.320 --> 00:02:02.240 Shaming mechanisms in different cultures. 25 00:02:03.360 --> 00:02:10.280 The 18th century poet Alexander Pope was on a roll proclaiming his destiny as the effective opposition to the corruption of his day. 26 00:02:10.440 --> 00:02:12.620 The day was 1738. 27 00:02:13.900 --> 00:02:19.180 Yes, I am proud, I must be proud to see men not afraid of God, afraid of me. 28 00:02:19.280 --> 00:02:24.860 Safe from the bar, the pulpit and the throne, yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone. 29 00:02:26.260 --> 00:02:27.380 It's exhilarating. 30 00:02:27.380 --> 00:02:28.100 But is it true? 31 00:02:29.060 --> 00:02:34.360 Was Walpole, the first British Prime Minister, and his regime really as bad as Pope says? 32 00:02:34.920 --> 00:02:42.300 Do we need shaming vigilantes like Pope, or perhaps like the Chaser Gang these days, in public life? 33 00:02:43.380 --> 00:02:46.400 Wouldn't sober and charitable debate be a better path to take? 34 00:02:47.900 --> 00:02:54.780 Now disgust, I understand, is a fundamental human emotion that goes back to the need to know to avoid putrid food. 35 00:02:55.720 --> 00:03:06.440 Armed with magnetic resonance imaging scanners, modern neuroscience has shown that moral disgust uses very much the same cerebral wiring as our visceral disgust. 36 00:03:06.480 --> 00:03:16.740 In other words, what happens in the brain seems to be very similar if you find something ethically disgusting to if you're confronted with some off meat. 37 00:03:17.820 --> 00:03:20.540 Whether this means anything is something we can debate. 38 00:03:21.560 --> 00:03:24.760 So it should come as no surprise, however, that satire and art are both very similar. 39 00:03:24.760 --> 00:03:29.580 And some other shaming mechanisms go back as far as human cultures, and we can see. 40 00:03:30.740 --> 00:03:38.620 So I then encourage the speakers to tell a story of how shame works for good and ill in your experience. 41 00:03:39.420 --> 00:03:48.760 My own inclination is to believe that a relatively free reign for expressions of disgust is one of the crucial fail-safe mechanisms for a free and liberal society. 42 00:03:49.180 --> 00:03:51.820 But you may see it differently, is how I phrase it. 43 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:54.740 So the basic question is whether shaming is something we should be afraid of. 44 00:03:54.740 --> 00:03:59.660 Whether it's something we should leave off, like violence, as civilisation becomes more ethically sophisticated. 45 00:04:00.540 --> 00:04:02.540 After all, it's designed to be destructive. 46 00:04:02.920 --> 00:04:04.320 Does that mean it is primitive? 47 00:04:04.720 --> 00:04:14.860 Or are corruption and shamelessness such permanent features of human culture that it will always remain a necessary and peculiarly satisfying evil? 48 00:04:16.500 --> 00:04:23.200 So, Londa Schiebinger, Catherine Gelber, Shakira Hussain and Raymond Gaither are going to talk about this. 49 00:04:23.200 --> 00:04:26.960 And first up, we have Londa Schiebinger. 50 00:04:29.340 --> 00:04:31.480 From the University of Stanford. 51 00:04:31.560 --> 00:04:33.980 Sorry, Stanford University, not the University of Stanford. 52 00:04:35.300 --> 00:04:37.600 She's the Heinz Professor of History. 53 00:04:38.020 --> 00:04:41.500 She's the Feinberg Director of the Klayman Institute for Gender Research. 54 00:04:41.940 --> 00:04:46.440 She's a historian of science and a historian of women's participation in science. 55 00:04:47.340 --> 00:04:51.960 She's interested in the structure of scientific institutions, the gendering of human knowledge. 56 00:04:53.380 --> 00:05:01.140 The breadth of her knowledge is, I think, very well represented by the titles of her books, which are in the program, but I think they bear reading out. 57 00:05:01.400 --> 00:05:10.700 The Mind Has No Sex, Women in the Origins of Modern Science, Nature's Body, Gender in the Making of Modern Science, Has Feminism Changed Science? 58 00:05:11.200 --> 00:05:18.500 And Plants and Empire, Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World, which is about the 18th century. 59 00:05:18.540 --> 00:05:21.160 It's about the period when science became a thing. 60 00:05:21.160 --> 00:05:23.280 Became a sort of separate discipline. 61 00:05:24.620 --> 00:05:26.760 So, Londa, speak first. 62 00:05:32.960 --> 00:05:34.580 Thank you very much. 63 00:05:34.960 --> 00:05:39.960 It's been a pleasure being here in Adelaide and addressing such wonderful audiences. 64 00:05:40.220 --> 00:05:45.500 I suppose I should try to shame you in some way for coming, but I don't think I will. 65 00:05:46.280 --> 00:05:50.680 Now, to my mind, shaming simply does not work in society. 66 00:05:51.160 --> 00:05:55.920 One man's shaming, one man's shame is another woman's glory, and vice versa. 67 00:05:56.960 --> 00:06:01.400 Societies, I would think, should be governed by sober and charitable debate. 68 00:06:02.240 --> 00:06:08.500 But sometimes even more is needed, such as hard-gained evidence, legislative action. 69 00:06:09.460 --> 00:06:13.000 And this is how human society should be governed. 70 00:06:13.500 --> 00:06:19.820 So I would like to take our example from the women's struggle to be in the professions, 71 00:06:19.820 --> 00:06:24.460 to be university professors, to be involved in the life of the mind. 72 00:06:25.060 --> 00:06:30.380 To shape human life through research, discovering new ideas, and new ways of living. 73 00:06:30.680 --> 00:06:41.760 And I chose this subject because shaming is often used in association with issues surrounding gender and ethnic equality. 74 00:06:42.200 --> 00:06:48.080 If you think about it, we often try to shame people into new behavior, and this is not something that we should do. 75 00:06:48.080 --> 00:06:54.300 For hundreds of years, intellectual women wrote treatises using the full range of human rhetoric, 76 00:06:54.540 --> 00:06:56.860 and most likely they included shaming. 77 00:06:57.360 --> 00:07:03.100 They used this rhetoric to argue for their rights, to enter university, to have the right to vote, 78 00:07:03.280 --> 00:07:06.060 to enter the professions of being a doctor or a lawyer. 79 00:07:06.340 --> 00:07:11.280 Think, for example, of Mary Wollstonecraft having her stabs at Jacques Rousseau, 80 00:07:11.480 --> 00:07:16.180 or Francois Poulin de la Barre, both fabulous rhetoricians, 81 00:07:16.260 --> 00:07:17.200 um, 82 00:07:17.560 --> 00:07:18.060 um, 83 00:07:18.080 --> 00:07:20.020 but this did nothing. 84 00:07:20.060 --> 00:07:25.160 This kind of rhetoric they used did very little to move women ahead. 85 00:07:25.840 --> 00:07:30.640 So what does work in moving ahead equality for women? 86 00:07:31.020 --> 00:07:36.020 I'm often asked why women do relatively well in U.S. universities. 87 00:07:36.480 --> 00:07:41.720 We're about 20% of the senior professors, I don't know what they are here in Australia, 88 00:07:42.040 --> 00:07:46.940 so 20% isn't very many, I'm talking about the very senior professors, 89 00:07:46.940 --> 00:07:52.560 but it's quite good compared to a number of European countries such as Germany, 90 00:07:52.660 --> 00:07:54.920 the Netherlands and Sweden who have only 10%. 91 00:07:55.680 --> 00:07:58.540 So shaming certainly did not get us there. 92 00:07:58.880 --> 00:08:01.980 What got us there was civil legislation. 93 00:08:02.520 --> 00:08:09.380 In the 1960s and 70s, the U.S. government passed the Equal Opportunity Act and the Equal Pay Act. 94 00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:13.500 They gave women, or anyone for that matter, the right to sue. 95 00:08:13.940 --> 00:08:16.220 And in the 1990s, 96 00:08:16.220 --> 00:08:21.120 academic women brought class action suits against universities. 97 00:08:21.360 --> 00:08:25.720 They banded together to argue for their rights. 98 00:08:26.080 --> 00:08:31.760 Now women don't have to do that any longer because the universities are mostly self-regulating 99 00:08:31.760 --> 00:08:33.420 in attempting to avoid suits. 100 00:08:33.860 --> 00:08:39.180 Now the second thing that works is not shaming but factual evidence. 101 00:08:40.220 --> 00:08:40.280 Data. 102 00:08:40.520 --> 00:08:42.580 The facts in black and white. 103 00:08:42.940 --> 00:08:44.940 People used not to believe 104 00:08:44.940 --> 00:08:48.700 that women were particularly underrepresented in academic life. 105 00:08:48.980 --> 00:08:50.500 This had to be demonstrated. 106 00:08:50.960 --> 00:08:53.760 In the United States, two very important things happened. 107 00:08:54.080 --> 00:08:59.140 In the 1970s, our National Science Foundation began gathering statistics 108 00:08:59.940 --> 00:09:02.260 on the composition of the scientific workforce. 109 00:09:02.860 --> 00:09:06.400 And one can now chart how many women got their PhD 110 00:09:06.400 --> 00:09:10.500 and then how many women should be represented in a particular field. 111 00:09:10.680 --> 00:09:14.260 If only 20% of women get PhDs in physics, say, 112 00:09:14.260 --> 00:09:18.160 they shouldn't be 50% of the physicists in the world. 113 00:09:18.260 --> 00:09:19.600 That would be kind of a problem. 114 00:09:20.180 --> 00:09:24.020 So if fewer, but the problem is, 115 00:09:24.080 --> 00:09:28.320 if fewer go into the profession than are prepared for it, 116 00:09:28.360 --> 00:09:30.040 then women can bring suit. 117 00:09:30.360 --> 00:09:31.820 And this is important. 118 00:09:31.960 --> 00:09:38.660 Our US National Academies just last month released a heavy report 119 00:09:39.260 --> 00:09:40.740 discussing the issues, 120 00:09:41.720 --> 00:09:45.940 whether or not women are represented in the proper numbers. 121 00:09:46.260 --> 00:09:49.340 And their findings were such 122 00:09:49.340 --> 00:09:52.280 that it got all the major universities off the hook, 123 00:09:52.420 --> 00:09:54.100 including Stanford University. 124 00:09:54.600 --> 00:09:57.300 Universities were in danger of losing their federal funding, 125 00:09:57.400 --> 00:09:59.140 their support for scientific research, 126 00:09:59.340 --> 00:10:02.360 if they were not in fact hiring and promoting women 127 00:10:02.360 --> 00:10:05.460 at the right percentage. 128 00:10:06.140 --> 00:10:08.200 Now there was a second development 129 00:10:08.200 --> 00:10:10.720 that really rocked the scientific community. 130 00:10:10.740 --> 00:10:11.100 And that was the development of the scientific world 131 00:10:11.100 --> 00:10:14.100 having to do with women's equality in 1999. 132 00:10:14.820 --> 00:10:19.620 And that was that all the women scientists at MIT got together, 133 00:10:19.840 --> 00:10:22.040 there were about 11 of them, not many, 134 00:10:22.160 --> 00:10:24.040 MIT is one of those technical universities, 135 00:10:25.280 --> 00:10:29.340 and they got together and they had the feeling 136 00:10:29.340 --> 00:10:33.280 that they did not have as many university resources 137 00:10:33.280 --> 00:10:35.340 as their male counterparts, 138 00:10:35.620 --> 00:10:37.540 but you can't argue with the feeling, 139 00:10:37.740 --> 00:10:40.340 you can't bring forward 140 00:10:40.920 --> 00:10:42.260 issues with the feeling. 141 00:10:42.360 --> 00:10:43.720 So they got out their measure sticks 142 00:10:43.720 --> 00:10:45.180 and they measured their lab space. 143 00:10:45.680 --> 00:10:49.040 And they found that in fact they overall, 144 00:10:49.320 --> 00:10:51.520 they as a group, had less lab space 145 00:10:51.520 --> 00:10:52.980 than the men as a group. 146 00:10:53.100 --> 00:10:54.700 And this really impressed people. 147 00:10:54.920 --> 00:10:57.700 It's scientific. It's a scientific method. 148 00:10:59.540 --> 00:11:02.160 Now in fact, I think it's very important 149 00:11:02.160 --> 00:11:04.300 not to shame people, 150 00:11:04.520 --> 00:11:08.660 especially in relationship to issues 151 00:11:08.660 --> 00:11:10.420 having to do with equality. 152 00:11:10.740 --> 00:11:14.320 This is not the way that you change minds and hearts. 153 00:11:14.620 --> 00:11:17.960 People who feel shamed harden themselves 154 00:11:18.740 --> 00:11:20.400 and they dig in their heels. 155 00:11:21.120 --> 00:11:24.140 Now for example, in the United States now, 156 00:11:24.400 --> 00:11:28.060 we often in industry and in universities 157 00:11:28.060 --> 00:11:29.220 and public institutions, 158 00:11:29.500 --> 00:11:32.200 we teach people about subtle gender bias. 159 00:11:32.480 --> 00:11:35.760 Subtle gender bias is when you are intending 160 00:11:35.760 --> 00:11:37.920 to treat people equally, 161 00:11:38.040 --> 00:11:39.800 but in fact you're not even aware 162 00:11:39.800 --> 00:11:41.780 that you're treating women 163 00:11:41.780 --> 00:11:45.460 or people of underrepresented minorities differently. 164 00:11:46.600 --> 00:11:51.840 Now it's very hard to convey this information 165 00:11:51.840 --> 00:11:54.680 to people who think they are not discriminating. 166 00:11:54.800 --> 00:11:56.500 But if you use a shaming, 167 00:11:56.560 --> 00:12:00.320 for early on what we did is we gathered people in rooms 168 00:12:00.320 --> 00:12:03.380 and a trainer would sit them down and say, 169 00:12:03.460 --> 00:12:04.800 now you are very, very bad. 170 00:12:05.080 --> 00:12:07.780 You are, you know, you are discriminating 171 00:12:07.780 --> 00:12:08.820 against various people. 172 00:12:08.820 --> 00:12:10.020 But this didn't work at all. 173 00:12:10.060 --> 00:12:11.060 There was a huge backlash. 174 00:12:12.340 --> 00:12:14.720 So what we are doing now, 175 00:12:14.780 --> 00:12:16.420 one of my colleagues at Stanford, 176 00:12:16.640 --> 00:12:18.840 Hannah Valentine, who is a famous cardiologist, 177 00:12:19.120 --> 00:12:21.380 has taken this issue on in the medical school 178 00:12:21.380 --> 00:12:23.140 and she has received grants 179 00:12:23.140 --> 00:12:25.500 from the National Institutes of Health to do this. 180 00:12:25.700 --> 00:12:27.960 And instead of sitting her colleagues down 181 00:12:27.960 --> 00:12:29.360 and saying, oh, you know, 182 00:12:29.440 --> 00:12:33.160 you have some really peculiar ideas about women 183 00:12:33.160 --> 00:12:34.880 and she herself is African American 184 00:12:34.880 --> 00:12:37.580 and about people from different ethnic backgrounds, 185 00:12:37.580 --> 00:12:39.960 she is having a research project. 186 00:12:40.260 --> 00:12:44.640 She is involving her colleagues in researching this issue. 187 00:12:44.860 --> 00:12:47.780 And professors are used to being involved in research 188 00:12:47.780 --> 00:12:49.600 and they are quite on board. 189 00:12:50.500 --> 00:12:51.920 So you get the picture. 190 00:12:52.160 --> 00:12:54.000 Key social issues need to be resolved 191 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:56.660 through careful debate, legislative action, 192 00:12:56.820 --> 00:12:58.080 and backed by evidence. 193 00:12:58.900 --> 00:13:01.020 So much for public issues. 194 00:13:01.800 --> 00:13:05.260 We see now how to, I think, 195 00:13:05.280 --> 00:13:07.240 create equality in the public sphere, 196 00:13:07.320 --> 00:13:07.560 but what we are doing now 197 00:13:07.580 --> 00:13:07.620 is we are creating equality in the private sphere. 198 00:13:07.620 --> 00:13:09.980 What about the private domestic sphere? 199 00:13:10.960 --> 00:13:14.020 Legislation does not creep into the home, 200 00:13:14.200 --> 00:13:16.640 perhaps as far as we would like it to. 201 00:13:16.840 --> 00:13:19.700 What about housework and childcare 202 00:13:19.700 --> 00:13:22.180 and the division of domestic labor? 203 00:13:22.980 --> 00:13:24.820 Okay, well, here is the problem. 204 00:13:25.200 --> 00:13:27.300 In the U.S., and I would guess 205 00:13:27.300 --> 00:13:29.200 that this is also true in Australia, 206 00:13:29.520 --> 00:13:33.160 women do about twice as much domestic labor, 207 00:13:33.280 --> 00:13:34.680 these are professional women, 208 00:13:34.680 --> 00:13:35.760 women with full-time jobs, 209 00:13:36.040 --> 00:13:38.980 do twice as much domestic labor as men. 210 00:13:39.460 --> 00:13:42.400 So women professors who are married with children 211 00:13:42.400 --> 00:13:45.560 do about 31 hours of domestic work per week 212 00:13:45.560 --> 00:13:49.560 and fathers in the same position do about 15 hours. 213 00:13:49.920 --> 00:13:53.960 And that is up from five hours in the 1960s. 214 00:13:54.120 --> 00:13:56.680 So I guess we should be really proud, you know, 215 00:13:56.780 --> 00:13:59.260 urge on the men in this. 216 00:14:00.360 --> 00:14:03.240 Now, to enjoy the life of the mind, 217 00:14:03.240 --> 00:14:06.220 even to attend this festival, 218 00:14:06.500 --> 00:14:09.520 someone has to be taking care of the kids, 219 00:14:09.740 --> 00:14:11.900 someone has to have laundered 220 00:14:11.900 --> 00:14:14.300 all the clean clothes that you are wearing, 221 00:14:14.460 --> 00:14:18.180 someone has to have gathered the food, 222 00:14:18.340 --> 00:14:20.580 purchased the food and prepared it 223 00:14:20.580 --> 00:14:22.820 that we all ate before we came. 224 00:14:23.600 --> 00:14:25.960 So I think there is a very close relationship 225 00:14:25.960 --> 00:14:27.420 between the life of the mind 226 00:14:27.420 --> 00:14:28.640 and the life of the belly. 227 00:14:31.820 --> 00:14:33.220 Now, women having done this, 228 00:14:33.240 --> 00:14:34.940 they have engaged in different strategies 229 00:14:34.940 --> 00:14:38.280 to try to get their partners to step up to the plate. 230 00:14:38.440 --> 00:14:41.220 And now my data comes from heterosexual couples. 231 00:14:41.780 --> 00:14:44.660 In a study that we did on housework, 232 00:14:44.740 --> 00:14:47.620 how much housework professors did, 233 00:14:47.700 --> 00:14:49.400 we included same-sex couples, 234 00:14:49.540 --> 00:14:51.900 but we didn't have enough to make it statistically 235 00:14:52.640 --> 00:14:54.040 something that we could talk about. 236 00:14:54.480 --> 00:14:56.280 But women have used different strategies 237 00:14:56.280 --> 00:14:58.420 to get their partners to step up to the plate. 238 00:14:58.660 --> 00:15:01.180 We've tried telling men that they are missing out 239 00:15:01.180 --> 00:15:02.580 on great things. 240 00:15:03.240 --> 00:15:05.660 The chance to bond with the domestic sphere, 241 00:15:05.900 --> 00:15:08.900 to get all those warm and tingling feelings 242 00:15:08.900 --> 00:15:11.340 from smelling fresh and warm laundry. 243 00:15:11.560 --> 00:15:14.120 I don't know, I sort of like taking it out of the dryer 244 00:15:14.120 --> 00:15:15.200 and embracing it. 245 00:15:15.800 --> 00:15:18.640 But we've also tried shaming men. 246 00:15:19.140 --> 00:15:20.000 You know, we say, 247 00:15:20.060 --> 00:15:22.500 honey, you're not doing your share, let's be equals. 248 00:15:22.660 --> 00:15:25.160 Now, I've been trying to shame the same man for 30 years. 249 00:15:25.480 --> 00:15:28.100 Let me tell you, shaming does not work 250 00:15:28.100 --> 00:15:31.800 because there are powerful forces at work, 251 00:15:31.820 --> 00:15:33.220 more powerful than shaming, 252 00:15:33.220 --> 00:15:34.880 and that is socialization. 253 00:15:35.240 --> 00:15:37.380 It's also social norms. 254 00:15:37.780 --> 00:15:40.180 One way you can tell how much housework 255 00:15:40.180 --> 00:15:42.240 a particular man is going to do 256 00:15:42.240 --> 00:15:44.020 is how much his friends do 257 00:15:44.020 --> 00:15:47.600 because we all fit into our social group. 258 00:15:48.100 --> 00:15:51.640 Now, what works, however, is outsourcing. 259 00:15:51.820 --> 00:15:55.040 And this is taking a private problem 260 00:15:55.040 --> 00:15:57.960 and moving it from the private sphere 261 00:15:57.960 --> 00:15:59.720 into the public sphere 262 00:15:59.720 --> 00:16:01.700 where it can be better regulated. 263 00:16:01.700 --> 00:16:04.040 Now, outsourcing simply means 264 00:16:04.040 --> 00:16:06.440 hiring someone else to clean your home 265 00:16:06.440 --> 00:16:08.620 or taking your clothes to the dry cleaners 266 00:16:08.620 --> 00:16:11.360 or going out for dinner or ordering in. 267 00:16:11.760 --> 00:16:13.920 In a recent study that I directed 268 00:16:13.920 --> 00:16:17.140 showed that scientists, men and women, 269 00:16:17.200 --> 00:16:19.480 are more productive, that is to say, 270 00:16:19.540 --> 00:16:21.920 they have more great scientific ideas, 271 00:16:22.260 --> 00:16:23.780 they publish more papers, 272 00:16:23.900 --> 00:16:27.320 if they hand over their housework to other people. 273 00:16:27.600 --> 00:16:30.260 So I think this is something that governments 274 00:16:30.260 --> 00:16:31.680 and universities should be aware of. 275 00:16:31.700 --> 00:16:32.520 And I think that's something that we should pay attention to 276 00:16:32.520 --> 00:16:34.820 because we, in fact, 277 00:16:34.820 --> 00:16:37.700 don't have enough scientists right now. 278 00:16:37.820 --> 00:16:40.380 In the US, we're always trying to recruit more. 279 00:16:40.540 --> 00:16:44.120 We're trying to get women to become scientists 280 00:16:44.120 --> 00:16:47.260 because we need to tap into that pool of talent. 281 00:16:47.560 --> 00:16:49.740 So this is an important issue 282 00:16:49.740 --> 00:16:52.120 that I think societies need to solve. 283 00:16:52.840 --> 00:16:54.400 If this is the case, 284 00:16:54.500 --> 00:16:57.060 if outsourcing solves some of the problems 285 00:16:57.060 --> 00:16:59.220 and it won't solve all of the problems, 286 00:16:59.220 --> 00:17:01.460 because even if you're hiring out your work, 287 00:17:01.620 --> 00:17:05.960 someone has to manage that process of hiring things out. 288 00:17:06.440 --> 00:17:10.220 But if it's the case that outsourcing solves part of the problem, 289 00:17:10.380 --> 00:17:12.920 then there's no reason why we can't improve things. 290 00:17:13.400 --> 00:17:16.020 Governments and institutions can provide resources 291 00:17:16.020 --> 00:17:19.620 to create a level playing field in the home. 292 00:17:21.320 --> 00:17:23.260 And this is just, I mean, 293 00:17:23.260 --> 00:17:25.340 we're familiar already with this approach 294 00:17:25.340 --> 00:17:27.780 because our governments, in fact, 295 00:17:27.780 --> 00:17:30.600 step into the private sphere in many instances. 296 00:17:30.900 --> 00:17:32.420 We all have healthcare. 297 00:17:32.920 --> 00:17:37.840 Governments and institutions help us afford our healthcare. 298 00:17:38.120 --> 00:17:40.800 Very often there are childcare schemes 299 00:17:41.640 --> 00:17:43.760 and these sorts of things. 300 00:17:44.080 --> 00:17:47.520 And so I think that institutions need to look more deeply 301 00:17:47.520 --> 00:17:50.900 into how to support aspects of private life 302 00:17:50.900 --> 00:17:55.360 that can support women's careers and our goals as a society. 303 00:17:55.680 --> 00:17:57.400 Now, my specific proposal 304 00:17:57.780 --> 00:17:59.600 is that government and institutions provide 305 00:17:59.600 --> 00:18:01.640 a bundle of flexible benefits 306 00:18:02.940 --> 00:18:07.080 that can be used for any aspect of the private side of life 307 00:18:07.080 --> 00:18:10.100 that saves time and hence enhances productivity. 308 00:18:11.140 --> 00:18:15.180 So I would conclude then that disgust or shaming 309 00:18:15.780 --> 00:18:17.340 and the like will get us nowhere. 310 00:18:17.840 --> 00:18:22.220 I think it's something that we can and should live without. 311 00:18:22.380 --> 00:18:23.160 Thank you. 312 00:18:29.220 --> 00:18:29.780 APPLAUSE 313 00:18:30.780 --> 00:18:31.840 Thank you, Londa. 314 00:18:32.540 --> 00:18:34.500 Now we turn to Raymond Gator, 315 00:18:34.620 --> 00:18:37.880 who is perhaps the foremost public philosopher in Australia. 316 00:18:38.140 --> 00:18:39.960 He's Professor of Moral Philosophy 317 00:18:39.960 --> 00:18:41.880 at King's College, University of London 318 00:18:41.880 --> 00:18:43.720 and at the Australian Catholic University. 319 00:18:44.860 --> 00:18:48.780 And he addresses a wide audience with a great serious... 320 00:18:49.400 --> 00:18:51.080 ..with a great philosophical seriousness. 321 00:18:51.400 --> 00:18:57.520 He treats us with the respect that suggests that we can, in fact, 322 00:18:57.520 --> 00:19:00.820 work our way through quite complicated ideas 323 00:19:01.520 --> 00:19:03.100 if we just pay a bit of attention. 324 00:19:03.960 --> 00:19:07.120 The books of his that I know a little and admire a lot 325 00:19:07.120 --> 00:19:10.460 are Romulus, My Father and A Common Humanity, 326 00:19:10.480 --> 00:19:12.100 Thinking About Love, Truth and Justice. 327 00:19:13.960 --> 00:19:18.080 And his commitment to absolute values, 328 00:19:18.420 --> 00:19:22.440 absolute human values, is apparent in all his work 329 00:19:22.440 --> 00:19:27.160 and I imagine will be apparent in the next ten minutes or so. 330 00:19:27.160 --> 00:19:27.640 Raymond. 331 00:19:29.180 --> 00:19:29.660 APPLAUSE 332 00:19:30.520 --> 00:19:32.280 Thank you for those kind... 333 00:19:32.280 --> 00:19:33.980 I don't really need this, do I? 334 00:19:34.080 --> 00:19:35.460 Thank you for those kind remarks. 335 00:19:36.080 --> 00:19:39.040 Well, I want to sketch some of the landscape 336 00:19:39.040 --> 00:19:41.760 and some of the landmarks in the landscape, 337 00:19:44.160 --> 00:19:47.500 conceptual landscape of morality's relation to shame. 338 00:19:48.440 --> 00:19:50.580 Well, shame has many facets, 339 00:19:50.700 --> 00:19:53.200 from, of course, involuntary to voluntary behaviour. 340 00:19:53.460 --> 00:19:55.200 We can be ashamed of how we look 341 00:19:55.880 --> 00:19:57.140 or for what we've done. 342 00:19:57.160 --> 00:20:00.680 Or rather, I'd prefer to say, in the case of shame, 343 00:20:00.780 --> 00:20:03.660 for what's been revealed about us through what we've done. 344 00:20:04.060 --> 00:20:07.800 And we can be ashamed about what, through no fault of our own, 345 00:20:07.860 --> 00:20:09.080 we've become caught up in, 346 00:20:09.160 --> 00:20:12.580 the crimes of our political ancestors, for example. 347 00:20:14.400 --> 00:20:15.920 And in this connection, 348 00:20:16.060 --> 00:20:18.260 it's important to distinguish shame from guilt. 349 00:20:18.960 --> 00:20:22.540 My cowardice might lead me, for example, to betray somebody. 350 00:20:23.300 --> 00:20:24.800 I'm guilty for the betrayal 351 00:20:24.800 --> 00:20:27.140 and remorse for the betrayal. 352 00:20:27.160 --> 00:20:27.740 I'm responsible for it. 353 00:20:28.080 --> 00:20:30.400 But ashamed of the coward and much else 354 00:20:30.400 --> 00:20:32.460 that might have been revealed about me. 355 00:20:32.880 --> 00:20:34.600 That's not a hard and fast distinction, 356 00:20:34.820 --> 00:20:36.240 but it'll do for the moment. 357 00:20:37.040 --> 00:20:40.800 I don't know much about the practices of shaming in various cultures, 358 00:20:40.880 --> 00:20:43.580 but I'll say a little about a distinction 359 00:20:43.580 --> 00:20:47.900 that's often drawn between shame and guilt cultures 360 00:20:48.620 --> 00:20:53.600 as that applies to ancient Greece and post-Christian societies. 361 00:20:54.820 --> 00:20:57.060 Aristotle, I'll say a little bit about. 362 00:20:57.160 --> 00:21:00.580 He was a man for whom nobility and honour 363 00:21:00.580 --> 00:21:04.420 were the focal concepts in his way of looking at ethical matters. 364 00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:07.460 And wherever you get honour as a focal concept, 365 00:21:09.480 --> 00:21:13.940 then you get shame as an important concept too. 366 00:21:14.820 --> 00:21:16.700 Aristotle believed that a good human life 367 00:21:16.700 --> 00:21:20.220 was lived in the enjoyment of the deserved esteem of one's peers. 368 00:21:20.840 --> 00:21:24.260 He believed that to be not merely one of life's good, 369 00:21:24.360 --> 00:21:25.260 but its chief good. 370 00:21:25.580 --> 00:21:27.140 And that's evident if we read it. 371 00:21:27.160 --> 00:21:29.240 We read him unprejudiced by a conception of morality 372 00:21:29.240 --> 00:21:31.020 deeply influenced by Christianity. 373 00:21:32.120 --> 00:21:34.820 The distance between his understanding of the virtues 374 00:21:34.820 --> 00:21:37.900 which he believed to be constitutive of a well-lived 375 00:21:37.900 --> 00:21:41.920 and happy or flourishing human life and ours 376 00:21:41.920 --> 00:21:44.760 is well brought out in one of his remarks on friendship. 377 00:21:45.360 --> 00:21:48.200 He considers whether it's the highest expression of friendship 378 00:21:48.200 --> 00:21:49.900 to lay down your life for a friend 379 00:21:49.900 --> 00:21:52.580 and rejects that idea in favour of the thought 380 00:21:52.580 --> 00:21:56.060 that it's finer to allow your friend to lay down his life for you 381 00:21:57.160 --> 00:22:00.040 because in that case all you get is life 382 00:22:00.040 --> 00:22:02.860 whereas she gets a shiny and glorious deed. 383 00:22:04.860 --> 00:22:06.460 He's quite serious about this. 384 00:22:10.460 --> 00:22:12.580 Just think of Achilles, for example. 385 00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:16.480 The unashamed enjoyment of our noble deeds 386 00:22:16.480 --> 00:22:19.280 and if we're lucky of a life blessed with many such deeds 387 00:22:19.280 --> 00:22:21.320 is alien to that part of ourselves 388 00:22:21.320 --> 00:22:23.380 which is influenced by a Christian understanding 389 00:22:24.160 --> 00:22:25.980 not of nobility or honour, 390 00:22:25.980 --> 00:22:27.380 but of goodness, 391 00:22:27.620 --> 00:22:30.700 or rather of a conception in which goodness 392 00:22:30.700 --> 00:22:33.200 rather than nobility or honour is the focal concept. 393 00:22:34.060 --> 00:22:36.180 It's part of ourselves which finds expression 394 00:22:36.180 --> 00:22:37.580 in the story of Saint Jerome 395 00:22:37.580 --> 00:22:40.060 who called to an appointment with Jesus 396 00:22:40.060 --> 00:22:43.060 made himself late by stopping to help a stranger 397 00:22:43.060 --> 00:22:45.900 free his cart from the mud in which it had sunk. 398 00:22:46.300 --> 00:22:47.940 The point of the story, of course, 399 00:22:48.040 --> 00:22:50.460 is that that was his appointment with Jesus. 400 00:22:51.260 --> 00:22:53.740 Goodness as we understand it can't be achieved 401 00:22:53.740 --> 00:22:55.180 by directly pursuing it. 402 00:22:55.980 --> 00:22:58.080 The most surest way of ensuring that our deeds are not good 403 00:22:58.080 --> 00:23:01.820 is by doing them for the sake of being good or doing good. 404 00:23:02.260 --> 00:23:05.340 And that observation is commonplace, it seems to me, 405 00:23:05.440 --> 00:23:07.960 for a post-Christian sort of culture. 406 00:23:08.700 --> 00:23:11.600 And the conception of virtue and its place in human life 407 00:23:11.600 --> 00:23:13.420 which I've claimed is Aristotle's 408 00:23:13.420 --> 00:23:15.540 is that it's of the essence of virtue 409 00:23:15.540 --> 00:23:17.000 that appear to be manifest 410 00:23:17.000 --> 00:23:19.580 to those who are worthy to judge and to honour it. 411 00:23:19.940 --> 00:23:22.560 That doesn't mean that we may act for the appearance 412 00:23:22.560 --> 00:23:24.560 rather than the reality of the virtue, 413 00:23:24.560 --> 00:23:27.420 but rather that its reality is a virtue 414 00:23:27.420 --> 00:23:31.320 whose exercise is partly constitutive of good human life 415 00:23:31.320 --> 00:23:33.540 is that it illuminates that life 416 00:23:33.540 --> 00:23:36.080 as one deserving of public honour. 417 00:23:36.640 --> 00:23:39.160 It's by no means a base conception of virtue. 418 00:23:39.300 --> 00:23:43.340 It expresses the uncoy enjoyment of a quite uncorrupt worldliness 419 00:23:43.340 --> 00:23:46.600 in which the public expression of the esteem of our peers 420 00:23:46.600 --> 00:23:48.420 and of our enjoyment of it 421 00:23:48.420 --> 00:23:50.020 is not only permissible 422 00:23:50.560 --> 00:23:53.260 but to be pursued as a constitutive of the good life. 423 00:23:54.440 --> 00:23:56.780 Justifiably to be shamed on many occasions 424 00:23:56.780 --> 00:23:59.980 that would obviously destroy that good life. 425 00:24:01.180 --> 00:24:05.260 Bernard Williams, who wrote a fine book called Shame and Necessity, 426 00:24:05.400 --> 00:24:07.980 adapted the Eastern European joke 427 00:24:07.980 --> 00:24:10.960 that says that communism was the longest road 428 00:24:10.960 --> 00:24:12.520 between capitalism and capitalism. 429 00:24:13.260 --> 00:24:15.640 He adapts that to read that Christianity 430 00:24:15.640 --> 00:24:18.700 was the longest road between paganism and paganism. 431 00:24:19.220 --> 00:24:22.400 He thought that with the effective collapse of Christianity 432 00:24:22.400 --> 00:24:24.740 as a force to be reckoned with in moral thinking 433 00:24:25.400 --> 00:24:27.520 we should return to the ancient Greeks for guidance. 434 00:24:27.680 --> 00:24:29.340 Not so much about what to do 435 00:24:29.340 --> 00:24:34.220 but about how to conceive the way that morality matters to us. 436 00:24:34.420 --> 00:24:36.980 The kind of place that it should have in our lives. 437 00:24:38.020 --> 00:24:40.500 We would then, he reckons, place less emphasis 438 00:24:40.500 --> 00:24:43.280 than we have done on the difference between shame and guilt. 439 00:24:43.860 --> 00:24:46.040 And together with a colleague, Richard Volheim, 440 00:24:46.240 --> 00:24:48.380 who also wrote a fine book called The Thread of Life, 441 00:24:49.440 --> 00:24:52.220 Volheim was deeply influenced by Kleinian psychology 442 00:24:52.400 --> 00:24:52.940 and his own self-analysis. 443 00:24:53.680 --> 00:24:56.000 He attacked, together with Volheim, 444 00:24:56.200 --> 00:24:59.440 a guilt-centred morality with a Kantian emphasis on obligations 445 00:25:00.400 --> 00:25:03.880 that fall upon a rather thin and characterless moral agent. 446 00:25:04.340 --> 00:25:07.640 They hoped to persuade us from allegiance to a sense of morality 447 00:25:07.640 --> 00:25:09.900 as being ubiquitous and overriding, 448 00:25:10.020 --> 00:25:13.880 which allows for no other value seriously to compete with moral value 449 00:25:14.400 --> 00:25:17.720 and which is marked by psychologically destructive preoccupation 450 00:25:17.720 --> 00:25:20.780 with a sense of guilt that's radically distinguished from shame. 451 00:25:20.780 --> 00:25:23.540 They believed that a critical philosophy 452 00:25:23.540 --> 00:25:26.060 which is historically informed and supported 453 00:25:26.060 --> 00:25:28.320 by a sophisticated moral psychology, 454 00:25:28.940 --> 00:25:32.020 itself probably deepened by evolutionary theory, 455 00:25:32.440 --> 00:25:35.540 will locate the nature of the value that we call moral 456 00:25:35.540 --> 00:25:39.340 or as much as they think can be retrieved from the distortions of religion, 457 00:25:40.020 --> 00:25:43.280 will place that firmly in the natural conditions of human life. 458 00:25:43.800 --> 00:25:48.320 And Volheim argued that morality, as he sometimes put it, 459 00:25:48.980 --> 00:25:50.760 or morality narrowly contained, 460 00:25:50.780 --> 00:25:52.280 or conceived, as he sometimes put it, 461 00:25:52.360 --> 00:25:56.620 is structured by the largely alien and persecutory voice of the superego 462 00:25:56.620 --> 00:25:58.820 and is thus oriented towards guilt 463 00:25:58.820 --> 00:26:03.020 and preoccupied with what to do rather than with what one should be. 464 00:26:03.700 --> 00:26:06.840 And he argues that morality inherits from the superego 465 00:26:06.840 --> 00:26:11.420 certain baleful, baneful features which are intrinsic to it 466 00:26:11.420 --> 00:26:14.200 and that to move beyond them we should think of shame 467 00:26:14.780 --> 00:26:17.180 as the prime sentiment of evolved morality, 468 00:26:17.420 --> 00:26:20.080 of morality beyond the superego. 469 00:26:21.040 --> 00:26:26.300 Well, there are some thoughts that place about the role of shame 470 00:26:26.300 --> 00:26:29.100 in the constitution of our ways of seeing the ethical. 471 00:26:29.300 --> 00:26:33.880 I don't in fact agree with them, but that doesn't matter. 472 00:26:36.900 --> 00:26:40.920 But it takes me to what I want to say about shaming 473 00:26:40.920 --> 00:26:44.540 as a punitive sort of institution, 474 00:26:44.820 --> 00:26:46.820 and I take that to be expressive, 475 00:26:46.940 --> 00:26:50.760 a very unsavoury disposition that seems to be right at the heart of it. 476 00:26:50.780 --> 00:26:51.700 And I think that's the part of our idea of morality 477 00:26:51.700 --> 00:26:54.400 to moralising in the prejurit... 478 00:26:54.400 --> 00:26:57.420 or judgmentalism in the prejurit sense of that term. 479 00:26:57.760 --> 00:27:00.820 And I think we have that because at least since Aristotle, 480 00:27:01.100 --> 00:27:03.480 an important part of our Western tradition 481 00:27:03.480 --> 00:27:07.640 has given us a conceptual morality that's both moralistic and legalistic. 482 00:27:08.160 --> 00:27:10.820 And it does this by binding conceptually 483 00:27:10.820 --> 00:27:14.760 the conditions under which one can justifiably apply moral concepts 484 00:27:14.760 --> 00:27:16.520 to someone's character or behaviour 485 00:27:16.520 --> 00:27:20.060 to the conditions under which one can praise or blame them 486 00:27:20.780 --> 00:27:21.820 for what they've done or made of themselves. 487 00:27:22.520 --> 00:27:25.540 And if you see morality like that, as so many people do, 488 00:27:25.840 --> 00:27:29.160 then of course you'll think that to judge someone's behaviour severely 489 00:27:29.780 --> 00:27:32.340 just is, amongst other things, to blame them, 490 00:27:32.500 --> 00:27:35.100 which often goes hand in hand 491 00:27:35.780 --> 00:27:39.660 with a preparedness to point fingers and to turn one's back on them. 492 00:27:40.440 --> 00:27:43.000 Well, many people find incoherent the idea 493 00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:46.060 that one could be morally severe without being judgmental. 494 00:27:46.460 --> 00:27:49.980 And that often shows itself when people argue over the behaviour of criminals, 495 00:27:50.780 --> 00:27:51.880 who have had appalling backgrounds, 496 00:27:52.780 --> 00:27:54.780 where it seems almost impossible to see in them 497 00:27:54.780 --> 00:27:56.340 a place where goodness could grow, 498 00:27:56.540 --> 00:27:58.720 because it's hard to see in those lives 499 00:27:58.720 --> 00:28:02.440 where the person who's lived that life could even have glimpsed goodness. 500 00:28:03.120 --> 00:28:06.600 And on the one hand, we have those who feel that they can't in themselves 501 00:28:06.600 --> 00:28:11.540 find in themselves a place from which to blame such criminals. 502 00:28:11.680 --> 00:28:12.860 Perhaps these people say, 503 00:28:12.960 --> 00:28:14.700 there but for the grace of God go I. 504 00:28:15.140 --> 00:28:19.760 And they often believe that they must therefore withhold moral descriptions 505 00:28:19.760 --> 00:28:21.560 of what the criminals have done. 506 00:28:22.360 --> 00:28:24.820 And on the other hand, there are those who feel strongly 507 00:28:24.820 --> 00:28:27.700 that moral descriptions do apply even in such cases 508 00:28:27.700 --> 00:28:29.140 to the criminal's behaviour, 509 00:28:29.400 --> 00:28:32.280 and they feel therefore that they're obliged to blame. 510 00:28:33.080 --> 00:28:34.920 And both sides to this dispute, 511 00:28:35.140 --> 00:28:37.720 those who refuse to apply moral descriptions, 512 00:28:38.200 --> 00:28:40.840 they say there but for the grace of God go I, 513 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:42.840 and those who insist on it, saying, 514 00:28:43.000 --> 00:28:45.860 not everybody who grows up like that behaves like that, etc. 515 00:28:46.500 --> 00:28:48.360 Both of them share this assumption, 516 00:28:48.360 --> 00:28:51.520 that moral descriptions justifiably apply 517 00:28:51.520 --> 00:28:54.820 only when those to whom they apply are culpable. 518 00:28:55.540 --> 00:28:57.760 And often thereby they commit themselves 519 00:28:57.760 --> 00:29:01.400 to irresolvably contentious theories about freedom of the will. 520 00:29:02.440 --> 00:29:05.440 Well, to see someone's behaviour in a morally severe light 521 00:29:05.440 --> 00:29:09.360 does not entail, I believe, that one must blame them for what they do. 522 00:29:10.280 --> 00:29:13.280 Primarily to hold someone responsible means to hold them, 523 00:29:13.400 --> 00:29:18.240 to fix them in a lucid response to the moral significance of what they did. 524 00:29:18.360 --> 00:29:22.380 It means that they and we must not evade that significance, 525 00:29:22.660 --> 00:29:26.260 but it does not necessarily mean that we find fault with them, 526 00:29:26.340 --> 00:29:28.060 that we should accuse them, 527 00:29:28.140 --> 00:29:31.000 or that we judge them to be proper objects of blame. 528 00:29:32.420 --> 00:29:34.860 Parents sometimes enable their children to see, 529 00:29:34.980 --> 00:29:38.140 and prevent them from evading the consequences of seeing, 530 00:29:38.320 --> 00:29:40.200 the terrible wrong they've done 531 00:29:40.200 --> 00:29:43.100 by the quality of their severe pity and sorrow 532 00:29:43.100 --> 00:29:46.160 for the wrongdoers those children became. 533 00:29:48.360 --> 00:29:49.800 Well, that conception of responsibility, 534 00:29:50.020 --> 00:29:52.960 that is to be, that I've just sketched, 535 00:29:52.960 --> 00:29:54.460 that is to be responsible, 536 00:29:54.660 --> 00:29:56.860 is essentially to be lucidly responsive 537 00:29:57.640 --> 00:30:00.160 to the moral significance of what one has done, 538 00:30:00.360 --> 00:30:03.100 or sometimes simply become caught up in, 539 00:30:03.720 --> 00:30:05.920 enables us to see more clearly 540 00:30:05.920 --> 00:30:08.860 something about the nature of collective responsibility. 541 00:30:09.280 --> 00:30:10.940 And I've written quite a bit about this. 542 00:30:11.480 --> 00:30:15.900 And that is that it needn't be collective guilt. 543 00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:18.100 The concept of shame might help. 544 00:30:18.760 --> 00:30:22.200 In Australia, reconciliation is the name 545 00:30:22.200 --> 00:30:23.520 that was given to the acknowledgement 546 00:30:23.520 --> 00:30:25.500 that past and present injustices 547 00:30:25.500 --> 00:30:27.380 against the Aboriginal peoples 548 00:30:27.380 --> 00:30:30.300 generated for the non-Aboriginal inhabitants 549 00:30:30.300 --> 00:30:32.460 a sense of collective responsibility 550 00:30:32.460 --> 00:30:35.340 for the wrongs committed by their political ancestors. 551 00:30:36.480 --> 00:30:38.700 Reconciliation, by the way, was never a good name 552 00:30:38.700 --> 00:30:40.320 because it implied, amongst other things, 553 00:30:40.500 --> 00:30:41.980 that non-Aboriginal Australians 554 00:30:41.980 --> 00:30:44.800 had a legitimate complaint against the Aborigines. 555 00:30:45.740 --> 00:30:47.280 Well, as one would expect, 556 00:30:47.280 --> 00:30:49.660 there's been disagreement about the nature 557 00:30:49.660 --> 00:30:51.140 and extent of collective responsibility. 558 00:30:52.120 --> 00:30:54.160 Generally, however, those who welcomed 559 00:30:54.160 --> 00:30:56.080 the diverse movements that came together 560 00:30:56.080 --> 00:30:57.400 under the head of reconciliation 561 00:30:58.240 --> 00:31:00.240 agreed that if contemporary Australians 562 00:31:00.240 --> 00:31:03.180 could speak intelligibly of what we did 563 00:31:03.180 --> 00:31:06.460 when we pioneered the land, 564 00:31:06.680 --> 00:31:07.500 or fought at Gallipoli, 565 00:31:08.280 --> 00:31:10.740 then appealing to that same sense of collective agency, 566 00:31:11.120 --> 00:31:14.560 they could say, as Paul Keating did at Redfern, 567 00:31:15.280 --> 00:31:17.260 of what we did when we did that. 568 00:31:17.280 --> 00:31:18.820 And that's why we dispossessed the Aboriginal peoples 569 00:31:18.820 --> 00:31:22.080 of their land or took their children from their mothers. 570 00:31:22.900 --> 00:31:26.180 The collective responsibility expressed in Keating's We 571 00:31:26.180 --> 00:31:27.940 is not collective guilt. 572 00:31:28.360 --> 00:31:30.160 John Howard was right to say 573 00:31:30.160 --> 00:31:32.500 that one should feel guilty only for what one has done, 574 00:31:32.660 --> 00:31:36.620 or in certain circumstances, for what one failed to do. 575 00:31:37.260 --> 00:31:39.760 Shame rather than guilt is the natural counterpart 576 00:31:40.280 --> 00:31:43.040 to the pride he so often expressed for Australia. 577 00:31:43.540 --> 00:31:46.280 And I've elaborated on the relevance of that distinction 578 00:31:46.280 --> 00:31:48.060 to a sense of collective responsibilities 579 00:31:48.060 --> 00:31:49.620 in many of my writings, 580 00:31:49.680 --> 00:31:51.760 so I won't go on about it here, 581 00:31:51.960 --> 00:31:55.860 except to say that shame for what one's country has done 582 00:31:55.860 --> 00:31:59.280 depends on a relation to it that's different from 583 00:31:59.280 --> 00:32:01.760 and in many respects deeper than citizenship. 584 00:32:03.480 --> 00:32:04.360 Oversimplifying a little, 585 00:32:05.300 --> 00:32:08.260 I'll call it an identity-forming relationship 586 00:32:08.260 --> 00:32:11.700 that makes Keating's We one of national fellowship, 587 00:32:11.900 --> 00:32:15.420 rather than merely one that enumerates membership of a class. 588 00:32:15.420 --> 00:32:19.860 That identity-forming relation takes time to develop, 589 00:32:20.120 --> 00:32:23.220 and beyond the respect, loyalty, obligation and gratitude 590 00:32:23.220 --> 00:32:24.860 to a newly naturalised immigrant 591 00:32:24.860 --> 00:32:27.700 that a newly naturalised immigrant might feel, 592 00:32:27.840 --> 00:32:29.600 requires something like love. 593 00:32:30.080 --> 00:32:33.680 And for that reason, the disillusion with national other institutions 594 00:32:34.420 --> 00:32:37.340 has driven some people, Peter Sutton for example, 595 00:32:37.340 --> 00:32:40.280 in his recently acclaimed book The Politics of Suffering, 596 00:32:40.380 --> 00:32:44.140 to argue that reconciliation is best expressed between individuals 597 00:32:44.140 --> 00:32:47.180 rather than by the actions of national institutions. 598 00:32:47.760 --> 00:32:49.280 And that, I think, is a mistake. 599 00:32:49.960 --> 00:32:53.340 The work of those institutions will count for nothing, of course, 600 00:32:54.140 --> 00:32:56.480 unless there's also friendship and sometimes love 601 00:32:56.480 --> 00:32:58.600 between Aborigines and non-Aborigines 602 00:32:59.140 --> 00:33:01.120 considered merely as individual human beings. 603 00:33:01.800 --> 00:33:03.480 Only as an Australian, however, 604 00:33:03.700 --> 00:33:07.120 whose identity has to some extent been shaped by being Australian, 605 00:33:07.380 --> 00:33:09.360 by attachments to this country, 606 00:33:09.540 --> 00:33:12.840 can I feel ashamed of what was done by my political ancestors. 607 00:33:12.840 --> 00:33:16.060 And only as an Australian, rather than a Victorian, 608 00:33:16.440 --> 00:33:19.280 can I feel rightly ashamed of what was done 609 00:33:19.280 --> 00:33:20.620 in other parts of the country. 610 00:33:21.380 --> 00:33:23.640 It's therefore also mistaken to say, 611 00:33:23.820 --> 00:33:26.160 as Sutton argues in that same book, 612 00:33:26.340 --> 00:33:28.780 that because all the states have apologised, 613 00:33:28.820 --> 00:33:31.200 there was no need ever for a national apology. 614 00:33:32.400 --> 00:33:35.680 In whatever way one finally unpacks morally and conceptually 615 00:33:35.680 --> 00:33:37.460 all that's contained in Keating's We, 616 00:33:37.700 --> 00:33:40.900 its use implies we can be called upon to be responsive 617 00:33:40.900 --> 00:33:42.820 to the moral character of what we've done, 618 00:33:42.840 --> 00:33:43.540 and not just being caught up in, 619 00:33:43.680 --> 00:33:46.100 though we played no causal part in it. 620 00:33:46.840 --> 00:33:49.140 And it's true of pride, it's true of shame. 621 00:33:49.680 --> 00:33:52.940 The former can decline into jingoism, 622 00:33:53.060 --> 00:33:56.040 that is, pride can decline into jingoism, 623 00:33:56.120 --> 00:33:59.200 and the latter, shame, into morbid self-abasement. 624 00:33:59.380 --> 00:34:01.320 But neither decline is necessary. 625 00:34:02.500 --> 00:34:06.260 People who desire, I would say lucidly, 626 00:34:06.260 --> 00:34:09.900 to love one's country without shame, 627 00:34:10.120 --> 00:34:12.820 to acknowledge shame when it's necessary to do so, 628 00:34:12.840 --> 00:34:15.860 is the only thing that can prevent love of country 629 00:34:15.860 --> 00:34:18.500 from degenerating into jingoism. 630 00:34:18.980 --> 00:34:21.000 And it's also necessary, I think, 631 00:34:21.080 --> 00:34:24.300 if we're to avoid a jingoistic conception 632 00:34:24.300 --> 00:34:26.820 of the common good or the national interest. 633 00:34:27.600 --> 00:34:29.780 Finally, just a couple of words about shaming, 634 00:34:29.820 --> 00:34:32.440 now as a public institution, a punitive institution. 635 00:34:33.940 --> 00:34:36.040 People who have become the victims of crimes, 636 00:34:36.260 --> 00:34:37.960 and this includes political crimes, 637 00:34:38.080 --> 00:34:39.620 hunger for justice to be done. 638 00:34:40.180 --> 00:34:41.960 And that, I believe, often requires 639 00:34:41.960 --> 00:34:44.680 the prosecution of those who committed the crimes. 640 00:34:45.260 --> 00:34:47.100 Many people who originally supported 641 00:34:47.100 --> 00:34:49.920 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa 642 00:34:49.920 --> 00:34:53.120 say that it did not satisfy that desire for justice. 643 00:34:53.420 --> 00:34:55.960 And they say that that unsatisfactory situation 644 00:34:55.960 --> 00:34:58.960 was compounded by the fact that no more truth 645 00:34:58.960 --> 00:35:01.280 and no more reconciliation were achieved 646 00:35:01.280 --> 00:35:03.660 than would have been the case had there been trials. 647 00:35:04.500 --> 00:35:06.660 Reports from Germany suggest the same 648 00:35:06.660 --> 00:35:08.100 in regard to Germany's decision 649 00:35:08.100 --> 00:35:10.260 not to prosecute Stasi criminals. 650 00:35:10.880 --> 00:35:11.940 A difference, however, 651 00:35:11.960 --> 00:35:12.860 in the case story might emerge 652 00:35:12.860 --> 00:35:14.380 from the former Czechoslovakia. 653 00:35:14.860 --> 00:35:17.960 But if justice is to be done to the victims of crimes, 654 00:35:18.140 --> 00:35:20.840 it is at least necessary to identify 655 00:35:20.840 --> 00:35:22.620 the perpetrators of those crimes 656 00:35:22.620 --> 00:35:25.640 and to give the right name to those crimes. 657 00:35:26.680 --> 00:35:28.860 Shaming, however, as a punitive institution, 658 00:35:29.200 --> 00:35:30.280 is different altogether. 659 00:35:31.320 --> 00:35:32.960 Justice requires, I believe, 660 00:35:33.140 --> 00:35:36.780 what Kant thought to be the acknowledgement 661 00:35:36.780 --> 00:35:38.980 of the inalienable dignity that's possessed 662 00:35:38.980 --> 00:35:41.080 by every human being, and to which 663 00:35:41.080 --> 00:35:43.260 every human being owes unconditional respect. 664 00:35:43.980 --> 00:35:46.600 Shaming, to the contrary, as a punitive institution, 665 00:35:47.000 --> 00:35:49.680 aims at degradation and humiliation, 666 00:35:49.980 --> 00:35:53.500 not at a humbled recognition of what one has done. 667 00:35:54.180 --> 00:35:57.520 It's the expression of that unsavoury moralistic dimension 668 00:35:57.520 --> 00:36:00.160 of morality that I spoke about earlier. 669 00:36:01.320 --> 00:36:03.840 Simone Weil once made the remark that 670 00:36:03.840 --> 00:36:06.440 human beings have the same carnal nature as animals. 671 00:36:06.720 --> 00:36:08.760 When a hen is sick and vulnerable, 672 00:36:08.980 --> 00:36:10.500 the others rush to peck it. 673 00:36:11.080 --> 00:36:11.760 Thank you. 674 00:36:17.840 --> 00:36:20.580 OK, thank you, Ray. 675 00:36:20.700 --> 00:36:24.120 My appetite for satire is looking pretty crook. 676 00:36:24.180 --> 00:36:27.260 I hope we don't have a scoreboard up there. 677 00:36:27.300 --> 00:36:29.440 But so far it seems that the desire to shame 678 00:36:29.440 --> 00:36:31.840 is useless, patriarchal and moralising. 679 00:36:34.560 --> 00:36:35.580 We'll see how we go. 680 00:36:36.200 --> 00:36:38.980 Shakira Hussain from ANU 681 00:36:39.880 --> 00:36:40.360 is... 682 00:36:41.860 --> 00:36:45.480 ..is as interesting as her coyly modest biography 683 00:36:45.480 --> 00:36:47.440 in the program suggests. 684 00:36:48.980 --> 00:36:51.520 The biography itself illustrates 685 00:36:51.520 --> 00:36:54.200 what a brilliant public writer and thinker she is 686 00:36:54.200 --> 00:36:57.140 on Islam, gender and multiculturalism. 687 00:36:57.540 --> 00:37:01.560 These are crucial issues for us as a society 688 00:37:01.560 --> 00:37:04.200 and in the world, 689 00:37:04.300 --> 00:37:08.060 and they so quickly degenerate into what I like to call dinosaur rhetoric, 690 00:37:08.140 --> 00:37:10.580 where people just talk their... 691 00:37:10.580 --> 00:37:14.540 ..talk their line of argument almost in isolation. 692 00:37:14.620 --> 00:37:18.480 They shout it and get the opposite response from the other side. 693 00:37:18.660 --> 00:37:20.820 That is very clearly not what Shakira does. 694 00:37:22.040 --> 00:37:24.140 Shakira's perspective is often humorous, 695 00:37:24.160 --> 00:37:25.560 always humanly sensitive, 696 00:37:26.580 --> 00:37:29.100 and the sort of thing we need to have more of 697 00:37:29.100 --> 00:37:31.100 to get beyond those battlements. 698 00:37:31.260 --> 00:37:31.800 Shakira. 699 00:37:33.360 --> 00:37:33.940 APPLAUSE 700 00:37:35.340 --> 00:37:35.920 APPLAUSE 701 00:37:37.340 --> 00:37:37.920 Yes. 702 00:37:39.660 --> 00:37:40.140 Thanks. 703 00:37:40.280 --> 00:37:43.280 You've heard of people who can't walk and chew gum at the same time. 704 00:37:43.320 --> 00:37:45.320 I can't stand up and think at the same time, 705 00:37:45.360 --> 00:37:47.540 so I'm not following my colleagues to the podium. 706 00:37:47.980 --> 00:37:50.240 Inshallah, I can sit and think at the same time 707 00:37:50.240 --> 00:37:51.880 and it won't be too shaming an experience. 708 00:37:53.760 --> 00:37:56.700 In the wake of the Satanic Verses affair 709 00:37:56.700 --> 00:37:57.900 and the Danish cartoons, 710 00:37:58.300 --> 00:38:00.900 the Muslim capacity for taking offence 711 00:38:00.900 --> 00:38:03.940 has been positioned as a threat to our society, 712 00:38:04.260 --> 00:38:07.420 our way of life, and in particular to our free speech. 713 00:38:08.740 --> 00:38:12.240 Muslims are seen as trying to silence voices 714 00:38:12.240 --> 00:38:14.700 that might cause offence to them, 715 00:38:14.780 --> 00:38:17.040 that might cause offence to their religious sensibilities. 716 00:38:17.700 --> 00:38:21.940 And it's often been alleged that newspaper editors, publishers, 717 00:38:22.180 --> 00:38:25.540 and others who are gatekeepers of our culture 718 00:38:25.540 --> 00:38:28.320 are exercising a form of self-censorship 719 00:38:28.320 --> 00:38:31.380 rather than risk causing offence to Muslims 720 00:38:31.380 --> 00:38:33.940 and ending up in hiding with Salman Rushdie, 721 00:38:34.100 --> 00:38:36.620 who wouldn't make a very easy flatmate from everything I've heard. 722 00:38:38.460 --> 00:38:40.200 As Rushdie himself says, 723 00:38:40.400 --> 00:38:42.640 Satanic Verses is a very long book 724 00:38:42.640 --> 00:38:44.780 and you'd have to go to quite a lot of work 725 00:38:44.780 --> 00:38:46.540 in order to be offended by it. 726 00:38:47.120 --> 00:38:50.860 And it's offensive to one person or another 727 00:38:50.860 --> 00:38:52.020 from start to finish, 728 00:38:52.100 --> 00:38:55.360 but there's plenty of offence within Satanic Verses 729 00:38:55.360 --> 00:38:56.220 to spread around. 730 00:38:56.320 --> 00:38:58.760 Quite a lot of offence to Margaret Thatcher, as I recall, 731 00:38:58.980 --> 00:39:00.700 to Sikh terrorists, 732 00:39:01.000 --> 00:39:04.040 to lots of targets besides Islam. 733 00:39:05.800 --> 00:39:07.280 Satanic Verses, I defend, 734 00:39:07.420 --> 00:39:10.140 as being a worthy artistic expression, 735 00:39:11.220 --> 00:39:13.020 whether it's offensive or not. 736 00:39:13.420 --> 00:39:17.220 The Danish cartoons, I'm less willing to defend on those grounds. 737 00:39:17.340 --> 00:39:19.280 I'm willing to defend the right to publish, 738 00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:23.640 but I'm not willing to defend them as being really worth the effort. 739 00:39:24.340 --> 00:39:26.940 And it's worth repeating the background to the Danish cartoons 740 00:39:26.940 --> 00:39:28.940 because that got lost in all the fracas. 741 00:39:29.900 --> 00:39:34.600 And that background is that the editor of, as I understand it, 742 00:39:34.620 --> 00:39:36.180 quite right-wing Danish newspaper, 743 00:39:36.180 --> 00:39:39.520 heard that a publisher was having trouble getting an illustrator 744 00:39:39.520 --> 00:39:42.180 for a children's book about the life of the Prophet 745 00:39:42.180 --> 00:39:45.940 because all the artists he approached 746 00:39:45.940 --> 00:39:49.240 knew that it was offensive to Muslims, 747 00:39:49.480 --> 00:39:51.740 or to many Muslims, not all, 748 00:39:51.820 --> 00:39:57.220 to draw a pictorial representation of people in general 749 00:39:57.220 --> 00:39:58.660 and the Prophet in particular. 750 00:39:59.120 --> 00:40:02.100 And the newspaper thought that was a dreadful example 751 00:40:02.100 --> 00:40:05.880 of a publisher bowing to Muslim demands. 752 00:40:05.880 --> 00:40:09.400 And so he commissioned a series of cartoons 753 00:40:10.220 --> 00:40:12.280 in which the Prophet would be drawn, 754 00:40:12.400 --> 00:40:13.300 would be represented, 755 00:40:13.560 --> 00:40:16.620 knowing full well that as far as some Muslims, 756 00:40:16.800 --> 00:40:17.980 many Muslims were concerned, 757 00:40:18.100 --> 00:40:19.380 this was an act of blasphemy. 758 00:40:20.160 --> 00:40:24.140 So it was an act whose entire purpose was to give offence, 759 00:40:24.220 --> 00:40:26.260 to give offence to Muslims in particular, 760 00:40:26.340 --> 00:40:30.040 who in Denmark, of course, are a marginalised minority group, 761 00:40:30.080 --> 00:40:32.180 not a powerful entity. 762 00:40:33.980 --> 00:40:35.860 And, well, he goes on, 763 00:40:35.880 --> 00:40:37.680 and he got a bit more offence than he bargained on 764 00:40:37.680 --> 00:40:41.380 because it wasn't only Muslims in Denmark who responded, 765 00:40:41.500 --> 00:40:43.880 as others have chronicled at great length, 766 00:40:43.980 --> 00:40:48.060 that this issue was taken up by Muslims in other countries, 767 00:40:48.240 --> 00:40:52.760 Muslims where Muslims are not a marginalised minority, 768 00:40:53.540 --> 00:40:57.280 Muslims where Muslims were the majority, 769 00:40:57.460 --> 00:41:01.980 were in power, were in state, were, you know, in charge of the state. 770 00:41:03.040 --> 00:41:05.780 And there was a general Muslim boycott 771 00:41:05.880 --> 00:41:07.520 of Danish feta cheese, as I recall, 772 00:41:07.740 --> 00:41:13.300 and other such products that were associated with this offensive act. 773 00:41:14.700 --> 00:41:17.920 And people were killed in these demonstrations, 774 00:41:18.880 --> 00:41:20.580 and Danish embassies, 775 00:41:21.380 --> 00:41:25.980 any institution that was seen as being associated with Denmark 776 00:41:27.280 --> 00:41:32.140 around the world came under, you know, quite violent attack. 777 00:41:34.040 --> 00:41:35.800 And in the wake of this, 778 00:41:36.840 --> 00:41:43.560 on the one hand, expression of the cartoons was seen as free speech, 779 00:41:44.540 --> 00:41:48.420 and there was a lot of criticism of newspapers in Australia and elsewhere 780 00:41:48.420 --> 00:41:49.920 for not reproducing the cartoons, 781 00:41:50.180 --> 00:41:53.420 for giving way to Muslim demands, for being silenced. 782 00:41:53.780 --> 00:41:56.440 On the other hand, expressions of Muslim offence, 783 00:41:56.500 --> 00:41:59.400 that wasn't seen as free speech, that was seen as incitement, 784 00:41:59.440 --> 00:42:05.600 that was seen as somehow giving support to the violent acts, 785 00:42:05.600 --> 00:42:08.040 the indefensibly violent acts that were being committed 786 00:42:08.040 --> 00:42:10.780 in the wake of this cartoon publication. 787 00:42:12.940 --> 00:42:16.260 If you're willing to defend the right to offend, 788 00:42:16.560 --> 00:42:20.420 then you have to also defend the right to be offended 789 00:42:20.420 --> 00:42:21.800 and to express it peacefully. 790 00:42:24.620 --> 00:42:29.980 And part of free expression is listening to the offended people 791 00:42:30.600 --> 00:42:32.200 as well as giving offence. 792 00:42:33.960 --> 00:42:36.820 And while I would defend the right to give offence also, 793 00:42:36.880 --> 00:42:41.100 I'd say that it's not productive to give offence 794 00:42:41.100 --> 00:42:43.520 merely for the sake of proving that you can do so. 795 00:42:43.920 --> 00:42:47.820 To give offence merely to, you know, 796 00:42:47.820 --> 00:42:51.400 to show that you are entitled to be offensive. 797 00:42:53.980 --> 00:42:59.400 So that's one incident that came to mind 798 00:42:59.400 --> 00:43:01.240 when I saw the title of this session. 799 00:43:02.360 --> 00:43:06.700 Another is the quite ritualistic means 800 00:43:06.700 --> 00:43:10.200 by which powerless people are shamed 801 00:43:10.200 --> 00:43:12.900 in order to impose a form of discipline. 802 00:43:13.940 --> 00:43:16.740 And I can think of two examples of this. 803 00:43:17.560 --> 00:43:20.520 And one is the ritualistic shaming of women, 804 00:43:20.600 --> 00:43:22.200 women of all religions, incidentally, 805 00:43:22.200 --> 00:43:24.860 who are seen to have gone astray in South Asia, 806 00:43:24.960 --> 00:43:28.400 by stripping them naked and walking them through the streets. 807 00:43:29.120 --> 00:43:31.660 That's a way of showing women that they've been bad, 808 00:43:31.660 --> 00:43:33.320 that they've transgressed in some ways, 809 00:43:33.400 --> 00:43:37.120 that they've challenged the given social order 810 00:43:37.120 --> 00:43:38.340 in ways that are unacceptable, 811 00:43:39.400 --> 00:43:44.080 to strip them, to leave them with no shelter at all. 812 00:43:45.540 --> 00:43:48.900 But I also thought of Muslim women in Australia 813 00:43:48.900 --> 00:43:51.900 who are stripped not naked, but stripped of their headscarves. 814 00:43:52.960 --> 00:43:57.100 And that's an interesting form of shaming somebody 815 00:43:57.100 --> 00:43:59.680 because the people who are tearing off their headscarves, 816 00:43:59.780 --> 00:44:01.640 of course, they don't think that they're 817 00:44:01.660 --> 00:44:03.180 going to get the sight of a woman's hair as offensive. 818 00:44:03.860 --> 00:44:06.820 They think that, in fact, covering a woman's hair is offensive. 819 00:44:07.680 --> 00:44:11.280 But they know very well that tearing off a headscarf 820 00:44:11.280 --> 00:44:14.900 will be experienced as shaming by the person to whom they're doing it. 821 00:44:16.360 --> 00:44:22.420 It's interpreted differently by the target than by the offender. 822 00:44:25.920 --> 00:44:29.080 And so that's one of the many forms of shaming 823 00:44:29.080 --> 00:44:33.320 that have been imposed on Muslims in the wake of 9-11. 824 00:44:35.980 --> 00:44:41.800 But I also thought of, besides the many, many countless times 825 00:44:41.800 --> 00:44:44.700 that I've opened a newspaper or turned on the television 826 00:44:44.700 --> 00:44:47.160 and felt offended over the last number of years 827 00:44:47.160 --> 00:44:48.760 by the opinions being expressed, 828 00:44:49.000 --> 00:44:54.040 I have also felt a fairly intense desire on occasions to be offensive. 829 00:44:54.800 --> 00:44:56.800 And, you know, I've given way to that. 830 00:44:56.800 --> 00:45:00.900 Most of what I write is very serious, long, extended, 831 00:45:00.960 --> 00:45:03.440 often academic articles, as Robert was saying, 832 00:45:03.480 --> 00:45:05.060 on gender Islam and South Asia, 833 00:45:05.140 --> 00:45:07.160 which aren't, frankly, a bundle of laughs. 834 00:45:07.880 --> 00:45:11.780 And so while I wouldn't describe myself as a satirist 835 00:45:11.780 --> 00:45:13.620 and I've really only dabbled around the edges, 836 00:45:13.700 --> 00:45:17.280 I have used it as a form of therapy at various points, 837 00:45:17.340 --> 00:45:20.140 usually with the odd, you know, 300 words for crikey. 838 00:45:21.380 --> 00:45:23.600 I'm not going to pretend that that's done anything 839 00:45:23.600 --> 00:45:25.320 to change the political landscape. 840 00:45:26.800 --> 00:45:31.600 But, you know, writing 300 words making fun of Kayser Tread's arse, 841 00:45:32.200 --> 00:45:34.260 it might not exactly change the world, 842 00:45:34.300 --> 00:45:36.060 but it sure as hell made me feel better. 843 00:45:36.860 --> 00:45:39.680 I mean, the chairman of the Islamic Friendship Association 844 00:45:39.680 --> 00:45:41.800 has a very substantial arse, 845 00:45:42.500 --> 00:45:45.280 and if you're looking for an easy target, it's kind of hard to miss. 846 00:45:47.340 --> 00:45:51.940 And this use of offensiveness as a form of relief, 847 00:45:52.040 --> 00:45:54.880 as a form of therapy, I think it's quite valuable. 848 00:45:55.120 --> 00:45:56.780 It is not going to... 849 00:45:56.800 --> 00:46:02.120 really, I doubt, bring about regime change. 850 00:46:02.340 --> 00:46:06.420 It would be nice to think that dictators, that governments, 851 00:46:06.700 --> 00:46:10.540 that powerful media proprietors are going to be made irrelevant, 852 00:46:10.660 --> 00:46:13.120 are going to be driven from their thrones of power 853 00:46:13.120 --> 00:46:15.280 by us poking fun at them. 854 00:46:16.360 --> 00:46:17.880 I'm inclined to think not. 855 00:46:18.580 --> 00:46:22.280 I'm inclined to think that no matter how ridiculous we make them seem, 856 00:46:22.420 --> 00:46:24.840 they've still got the instruments of power 857 00:46:24.840 --> 00:46:26.100 when it comes right down to it. 858 00:46:26.100 --> 00:46:27.120 They've got the military, 859 00:46:27.320 --> 00:46:30.180 and laughter isn't quite so powerful. 860 00:46:30.420 --> 00:46:32.720 But it keeps us going. 861 00:46:34.240 --> 00:46:35.760 It keeps us... 862 00:46:38.100 --> 00:46:41.840 It keeps us from being entirely disheartened. 863 00:46:42.340 --> 00:46:46.060 Maybe that's why military dictatorships produce the best satire. 864 00:46:46.800 --> 00:46:50.240 Maybe that's why John Howard has been such a huge loss 865 00:46:50.240 --> 00:46:51.800 for the comedians of Australia. 866 00:46:51.980 --> 00:46:55.300 Really, I don't think the chase has ever recovered. 867 00:46:57.800 --> 00:47:01.860 Kevin Rudd, I'm sure, will produce some fabulous satire in good time 868 00:47:01.860 --> 00:47:03.040 and is already doing so, 869 00:47:03.160 --> 00:47:06.140 but just at the moment we're still wrapping our heads around 870 00:47:06.140 --> 00:47:07.360 the loss of John Howard. 871 00:47:07.620 --> 00:47:12.680 I have to say, for all I've complained about Bromwyn Bishop's over the years, 872 00:47:12.780 --> 00:47:13.880 I was deeply... 873 00:47:13.880 --> 00:47:17.900 I felt a deep sense of disappointment to hear that she's in danger 874 00:47:17.900 --> 00:47:20.480 of losing her pre-selection next election. 875 00:47:21.060 --> 00:47:22.360 What are we going to do? 876 00:47:23.400 --> 00:47:25.020 Who are we going to satirise? 877 00:47:25.020 --> 00:47:27.620 Who are we going to laugh at when Bromwyn leaves the scene? 878 00:47:27.880 --> 00:47:29.640 I just felt bereft. 879 00:47:32.620 --> 00:47:35.260 And so I think offensiveness, 880 00:47:35.920 --> 00:47:41.340 it's a weapon that's usefully deployed against the powerless... 881 00:47:41.340 --> 00:47:42.380 Powerful, sorry. 882 00:47:42.800 --> 00:47:46.380 Unfortunately, it's also deployed too often against the powerless. 883 00:47:46.860 --> 00:47:49.940 Reality TV, I think, is another good example of that. 884 00:47:51.340 --> 00:47:54.940 So I will continue to be offended 885 00:47:55.020 --> 00:47:57.020 by the fact that I'm offensive wherever possible. 886 00:47:57.520 --> 00:48:01.580 Really, as I said, sometimes it's the only thing that gets me up in the morning. 887 00:48:02.000 --> 00:48:04.460 It's the only thing that gets me to the computer. 888 00:48:04.620 --> 00:48:07.920 I can't face this pressing academic deadline, 889 00:48:08.140 --> 00:48:10.920 but I think I'll rattle off a few words for Crikey 890 00:48:10.920 --> 00:48:12.440 and that'll get me in the mood. 891 00:48:13.480 --> 00:48:13.940 Inshallah. 892 00:48:17.200 --> 00:48:19.500 And I will continue to get offended 893 00:48:19.500 --> 00:48:22.940 by a lot of what I see being expressed in the public realm. 894 00:48:22.940 --> 00:48:25.780 And I will continue to express that offence. 895 00:48:26.540 --> 00:48:28.680 And I will defend to the death 896 00:48:28.680 --> 00:48:30.100 my right to be offended 897 00:48:30.100 --> 00:48:32.280 and my right to take offence. 898 00:48:38.960 --> 00:48:41.080 Just to affirm that last point, 899 00:48:41.160 --> 00:48:42.860 my colleague Hayden Manning and I 900 00:48:42.860 --> 00:48:45.120 have, for the last several elections, 901 00:48:45.800 --> 00:48:48.000 followed the shape of the election campaign 902 00:48:48.000 --> 00:48:51.100 by reviewing all the political cartoons. 903 00:48:51.100 --> 00:48:53.460 We call this a research project. 904 00:48:55.060 --> 00:48:58.400 And we get quite serious publications out of it. 905 00:48:58.480 --> 00:49:01.820 And why I'm saying this is to affirm that point 906 00:49:01.820 --> 00:49:04.920 about taking offence as a sort of therapy. 907 00:49:05.080 --> 00:49:09.580 In 2001, every cartoonist that we saw in Australia, 908 00:49:09.760 --> 00:49:13.100 with the partial exception of the cartoonist in the West Australian, 909 00:49:13.360 --> 00:49:18.340 was outraged by the Howard government's approach to asylum seekers. 910 00:49:18.620 --> 00:49:21.080 Did cartoon after cartoon show in Australia 911 00:49:21.100 --> 00:49:24.240 showing Howard and Ruddock as monsters 912 00:49:25.640 --> 00:49:28.980 and Beazley as an equivocator? 913 00:49:29.220 --> 00:49:33.620 So far as I can tell, that had no impact on the election result in 2001. 914 00:49:36.820 --> 00:49:38.360 It didn't change votes. 915 00:49:38.600 --> 00:49:40.480 I think it was wonderfully therapeutic 916 00:49:40.480 --> 00:49:45.440 for those of us who thought it was a monstrous activity. 917 00:49:45.900 --> 00:49:49.040 On the other hand, perhaps we just laughed 918 00:49:49.040 --> 00:49:51.300 and didn't do enough to change things. 919 00:49:51.720 --> 00:49:53.760 Anyway, I'm talking too much. 920 00:49:56.140 --> 00:49:57.720 Now, Catherine Gelber, 921 00:49:58.620 --> 00:50:02.180 one of the rising stars of Australian political science. 922 00:50:03.520 --> 00:50:05.440 Catherine's doing crucial work 923 00:50:05.440 --> 00:50:08.040 at the University of New South Wales on hate speech. 924 00:50:08.800 --> 00:50:11.880 And hate speech, it's important, 925 00:50:12.060 --> 00:50:14.940 and those of you who were at her Mitchell Oration 926 00:50:14.940 --> 00:50:16.280 will understand this, 927 00:50:16.280 --> 00:50:19.680 that Catherine is not interested in muzzling free speech. 928 00:50:19.780 --> 00:50:22.520 She wants robust free speech in this nation, 929 00:50:22.580 --> 00:50:26.780 but she also wants to find the criteria 930 00:50:26.780 --> 00:50:29.320 by which it doesn't become simply destructive. 931 00:50:29.740 --> 00:50:33.120 So the questions of public shaming, therefore, 932 00:50:33.180 --> 00:50:34.920 seem to me to be right at the pointy end 933 00:50:34.920 --> 00:50:38.640 of what turns from free speech into hate speech. 934 00:50:38.860 --> 00:50:39.340 Catherine. 935 00:50:39.580 --> 00:50:40.340 Thank you. 936 00:50:46.760 --> 00:50:48.600 Speech is powerful. 937 00:50:49.460 --> 00:50:51.220 Speech does things. 938 00:50:52.960 --> 00:50:55.440 In traditional libertarian arguments 939 00:50:55.440 --> 00:50:57.500 about why speech is essential 940 00:50:57.500 --> 00:50:59.380 and why freedom of speech is essential, 941 00:51:00.280 --> 00:51:02.440 the argument tends to be assumed, 942 00:51:02.520 --> 00:51:03.720 if not made explicit, 943 00:51:04.080 --> 00:51:06.820 that speech is just an expression of opinion. 944 00:51:07.060 --> 00:51:08.660 All you're doing is saying something. 945 00:51:08.940 --> 00:51:12.080 And I don't want to restrict myself here to verbal words 946 00:51:12.080 --> 00:51:14.340 because we all know that images, cartoons, 947 00:51:14.680 --> 00:51:16.260 and non-verbal media, 948 00:51:16.260 --> 00:51:16.780 and all other means of expression 949 00:51:16.780 --> 00:51:18.920 can also be very expressive in that sense. 950 00:51:19.140 --> 00:51:21.360 So including all of those types of expression, 951 00:51:22.260 --> 00:51:23.920 the classic libertarian argument is 952 00:51:23.920 --> 00:51:26.200 it's just somebody saying what they think. 953 00:51:26.880 --> 00:51:28.740 And, of course, even as children, 954 00:51:28.880 --> 00:51:30.940 we're also taught the slogans, 955 00:51:30.940 --> 00:51:32.820 sticks and stones may hurt my bones, 956 00:51:32.920 --> 00:51:35.640 but names or words will never hurt me. 957 00:51:36.020 --> 00:51:37.320 I don't believe that. 958 00:51:38.040 --> 00:51:41.860 And I don't think that if many of us really looked carefully 959 00:51:41.860 --> 00:51:44.080 at what speech is and what speech can do, 960 00:51:44.140 --> 00:51:45.320 that we would agree with that. 961 00:51:46.260 --> 00:51:47.240 Speech is powerful. 962 00:51:48.140 --> 00:51:50.660 Speech does things in the saying of it. 963 00:51:51.120 --> 00:51:54.100 And because speech can do things in the saying of it, 964 00:51:54.180 --> 00:51:56.300 it can do good things and it can do bad things. 965 00:51:57.120 --> 00:51:59.440 We do things with our speech all the time. 966 00:51:59.620 --> 00:52:01.640 If somebody knocks on your door and you say, 967 00:52:01.680 --> 00:52:04.000 come in, you're not just expressing an opinion, 968 00:52:04.120 --> 00:52:05.120 you're giving them permission. 969 00:52:06.020 --> 00:52:09.860 If two people stand in front of a celebrant and some witnesses, 970 00:52:09.940 --> 00:52:13.160 and in Australia, if they're a man and a woman, 971 00:52:13.300 --> 00:52:16.000 and they exchange vows and a promise, 972 00:52:16.260 --> 00:52:16.800 and a ring, 973 00:52:17.000 --> 00:52:20.940 then they are considered to have entered into a legally binding contract. 974 00:52:21.520 --> 00:52:23.520 That contract has repercussions. 975 00:52:23.780 --> 00:52:27.720 In saying the words, I do, they have done something. 976 00:52:27.900 --> 00:52:29.900 They haven't just expressed an opinion. 977 00:52:30.960 --> 00:52:33.780 Now, having said that, for those words, I do, 978 00:52:33.900 --> 00:52:36.740 to have meant what they intended them to mean, 979 00:52:36.840 --> 00:52:38.840 and for them to have the force 980 00:52:38.840 --> 00:52:41.720 that the participants intended them to have, 981 00:52:42.020 --> 00:52:45.460 the conditions need to be, if you like, felicitous. 982 00:52:45.460 --> 00:52:47.680 They need to be the right kind of conditions. 983 00:52:48.480 --> 00:52:50.660 So, as I said before, in Australia, 984 00:52:50.860 --> 00:52:53.660 those two people have to be one man and one woman. 985 00:52:54.600 --> 00:52:59.480 In Australia, if two women undertake exactly the same ceremony, 986 00:52:59.480 --> 00:53:02.160 or two men undertake exactly the same ceremony, 987 00:53:02.420 --> 00:53:04.380 the outcome is not at all the same, 988 00:53:04.420 --> 00:53:08.200 legally speaking and socially speaking and culturally speaking. 989 00:53:08.740 --> 00:53:10.820 So the conditions have to be right. 990 00:53:12.240 --> 00:53:15.020 I think that we should pay more attention 991 00:53:15.020 --> 00:53:16.900 to where speech does good things 992 00:53:16.900 --> 00:53:18.880 and to where speech does bad things. 993 00:53:19.440 --> 00:53:21.320 Speech can do bad things 994 00:53:21.320 --> 00:53:24.860 when it encourages people who are already behaving badly 995 00:53:24.860 --> 00:53:26.940 to continue to behave badly 996 00:53:26.940 --> 00:53:29.920 or to behave even worse than they were before. 997 00:53:30.760 --> 00:53:32.560 Speech can do bad things 998 00:53:32.560 --> 00:53:36.380 when it destroys one's sense of self. 999 00:53:37.220 --> 00:53:39.460 Speech can do bad things 1000 00:53:39.460 --> 00:53:41.260 when it amounts to bullying. 1001 00:53:42.220 --> 00:53:44.900 I don't necessarily think that speech is automatic. 1002 00:53:45.020 --> 00:53:47.040 It can do automatically bad or does bad things 1003 00:53:47.040 --> 00:53:48.280 when it just offends people. 1004 00:53:48.440 --> 00:53:50.100 And we've just had a brilliant example 1005 00:53:50.100 --> 00:53:53.380 of how offensive speech can galvanise people, 1006 00:53:53.740 --> 00:53:57.440 can make them more interested in expressing their ideas. 1007 00:53:58.040 --> 00:54:00.200 So we need to be careful about assessing 1008 00:54:00.200 --> 00:54:03.240 when speech is bad and when speech is good. 1009 00:54:03.320 --> 00:54:06.500 But it is undoubtedly true that speech can do bad things. 1010 00:54:06.920 --> 00:54:08.580 It can amount to bullying. 1011 00:54:08.760 --> 00:54:10.660 It can destroy self-esteem. 1012 00:54:10.900 --> 00:54:13.100 It can encourage poor behaviour. 1013 00:54:15.020 --> 00:54:17.000 It can also do good things. 1014 00:54:17.260 --> 00:54:19.680 Just as speech is capable of doing bad things 1015 00:54:19.680 --> 00:54:21.020 like instilling stereotypes, 1016 00:54:21.720 --> 00:54:24.620 the seeds of stereotypes into people's minds 1017 00:54:24.620 --> 00:54:27.620 about how certain categories of people might behave 1018 00:54:27.620 --> 00:54:29.220 or might be prone to behave. 1019 00:54:29.580 --> 00:54:31.720 That's another example of one of the bad things. 1020 00:54:32.080 --> 00:54:34.180 But it can also do good things. 1021 00:54:34.260 --> 00:54:36.920 It can enhance people's sense of self-esteem, 1022 00:54:37.020 --> 00:54:38.500 enhance people's sense of worth. 1023 00:54:38.720 --> 00:54:42.440 It can facilitate real communication. 1024 00:54:43.920 --> 00:54:45.000 And I'd like to say 1025 00:54:45.020 --> 00:54:47.260 that I'd like us to think more about 1026 00:54:47.260 --> 00:54:50.240 where it can do good things and where it can do bad things. 1027 00:54:51.820 --> 00:54:53.420 If we want to think of examples 1028 00:54:53.420 --> 00:54:56.700 of when speech can do good things in and for people's lives, 1029 00:54:56.760 --> 00:54:58.740 particularly in the context of shaming, 1030 00:54:58.960 --> 00:55:00.640 I think it is possible, 1031 00:55:00.720 --> 00:55:02.980 in contrast to some of the other things we've heard today, 1032 00:55:03.120 --> 00:55:05.660 I think it is possible for shaming as a strategy 1033 00:55:05.660 --> 00:55:10.080 to do good things for the people who participate in that strategy. 1034 00:55:10.580 --> 00:55:12.740 But I think for that to happen, 1035 00:55:12.920 --> 00:55:15.000 the context has to be wrong. 1036 00:55:15.020 --> 00:55:19.760 And we have to pay very careful attention to that context. 1037 00:55:20.140 --> 00:55:24.520 So I don't support shaming across the board, in principle, 1038 00:55:24.720 --> 00:55:27.320 as something to be used willy-nilly, 1039 00:55:27.440 --> 00:55:30.280 as something to be used whenever we think it might be a good idea. 1040 00:55:31.640 --> 00:55:34.280 The context within which we participate 1041 00:55:34.280 --> 00:55:38.400 in the kind of expression we might think of as shaming is important. 1042 00:55:39.060 --> 00:55:42.360 The person to whom the shaming is being addressed 1043 00:55:42.360 --> 00:55:45.000 needs to be capable of being shamed. 1044 00:55:45.020 --> 00:55:49.120 They need to be susceptible to the sensitivities 1045 00:55:49.120 --> 00:55:53.840 that the people undertaking that activity are trying to instil in them. 1046 00:55:54.520 --> 00:55:56.120 Now, we can all think of people, 1047 00:55:56.260 --> 00:55:58.660 individuals and institutions and governments, 1048 00:55:58.740 --> 00:56:00.660 who are just incapable of being shamed. 1049 00:56:01.300 --> 00:56:03.000 And in that instance, 1050 00:56:03.340 --> 00:56:06.200 perhaps we might still continue the shaming 1051 00:56:06.200 --> 00:56:10.480 if there were other conditions that might encourage us to do it, 1052 00:56:10.480 --> 00:56:11.200 but we might not. 1053 00:56:11.900 --> 00:56:15.000 So the person at whom the shaming is directed now 1054 00:56:15.020 --> 00:56:18.960 needs to be, in some sense, sensitive to what is trying to be done. 1055 00:56:20.560 --> 00:56:23.700 The context and the method need to be constructive, 1056 00:56:23.920 --> 00:56:24.820 not destructive, 1057 00:56:26.020 --> 00:56:28.720 of the conditions that people require 1058 00:56:28.720 --> 00:56:30.420 in order to develop well, 1059 00:56:30.580 --> 00:56:32.220 in order to improve behaviour, 1060 00:56:32.460 --> 00:56:36.580 in order to be able to communicate meaningfully with one another 1061 00:56:36.580 --> 00:56:38.020 as human beings. 1062 00:56:38.880 --> 00:56:43.440 The speech itself, the words or the expressions or the images that are used, 1063 00:56:43.520 --> 00:56:44.340 need to be sensitive 1064 00:56:44.340 --> 00:56:45.600 and need to be constructive. 1065 00:56:45.980 --> 00:56:48.360 And there I mean that we can't, 1066 00:56:48.360 --> 00:56:51.620 we shouldn't resort to bullying, 1067 00:56:51.760 --> 00:56:53.380 we shouldn't resort to vilification, 1068 00:56:54.340 --> 00:56:57.520 we shouldn't resort to destroying somebody's personality. 1069 00:56:59.100 --> 00:57:00.200 There have been, 1070 00:57:00.280 --> 00:57:03.540 there's a variety of literature of instances 1071 00:57:03.540 --> 00:57:06.800 within which shaming can be and is being used. 1072 00:57:07.080 --> 00:57:09.460 For example, with drink drivers, 1073 00:57:09.660 --> 00:57:13.280 particularly people who've had more than one offence of drink driving, 1074 00:57:13.360 --> 00:57:14.220 there are some experiments 1075 00:57:14.340 --> 00:57:16.720 going on with reintegrative shaming 1076 00:57:17.340 --> 00:57:20.700 where people who, up until that point in time, 1077 00:57:20.780 --> 00:57:24.080 really have been unaware of the consequences of their drink driving 1078 00:57:24.080 --> 00:57:27.320 might be able to be brought into a situation 1079 00:57:27.320 --> 00:57:30.500 where they carefully and in a proper environment 1080 00:57:30.500 --> 00:57:32.000 are made more aware, 1081 00:57:32.160 --> 00:57:34.540 attempts are made to make those people more aware 1082 00:57:34.540 --> 00:57:36.340 of the consequences of drink driving, 1083 00:57:36.540 --> 00:57:39.480 sometimes fatal consequences, horrific consequences, 1084 00:57:39.520 --> 00:57:41.260 of their drink driving 1085 00:57:41.260 --> 00:57:43.500 on the community to which they belong. 1086 00:57:44.420 --> 00:57:47.840 It's my understanding that some elements of shaming 1087 00:57:47.840 --> 00:57:50.080 have been used in some programs 1088 00:57:50.080 --> 00:57:52.340 to try and address bullying in schools. 1089 00:57:52.780 --> 00:57:55.620 Now again, there you would have to be very, very careful 1090 00:57:55.620 --> 00:57:59.940 about how you went about the process of conducting shaming, 1091 00:58:00.000 --> 00:58:01.820 particularly if you were involving children 1092 00:58:01.820 --> 00:58:04.140 whose cognitive awareness of risk 1093 00:58:04.140 --> 00:58:06.600 and whose ability to assess risk 1094 00:58:06.600 --> 00:58:09.420 and assess the complicated context 1095 00:58:09.420 --> 00:58:11.360 within which things are going on 1096 00:58:11.360 --> 00:58:13.580 is still being developed. 1097 00:58:13.580 --> 00:58:15.320 So care needs to be taken. 1098 00:58:15.440 --> 00:58:18.120 But I do believe that there are those kinds of instances 1099 00:58:18.120 --> 00:58:21.160 where shaming can be used constructively, 1100 00:58:22.080 --> 00:58:24.400 where the context can be done in... 1101 00:58:24.400 --> 00:58:26.700 ..can be paid great attention to, 1102 00:58:26.840 --> 00:58:28.860 where the words that are being used 1103 00:58:28.860 --> 00:58:30.180 and the people who are participating 1104 00:58:30.180 --> 00:58:31.900 can be carefully chosen 1105 00:58:32.580 --> 00:58:36.480 and very, very much attention can be paid to the context. 1106 00:58:37.520 --> 00:58:40.160 I think shaming is infelicitous 1107 00:58:40.160 --> 00:58:43.400 when you're addressing it in a manner 1108 00:58:43.400 --> 00:58:44.420 that becomes vilifying, 1109 00:58:45.400 --> 00:58:46.900 which moves beyond being offensive 1110 00:58:46.900 --> 00:58:50.580 and moves into...in creating harm. 1111 00:58:50.940 --> 00:58:53.200 And one of the examples of that 1112 00:58:53.200 --> 00:58:54.680 is the one I referred to a moment ago, 1113 00:58:54.760 --> 00:58:57.940 where you instil the seeds of a negative stereotype 1114 00:58:57.940 --> 00:58:59.220 in people's minds, 1115 00:58:59.400 --> 00:59:01.900 particularly stereotypes about racial groups 1116 00:59:01.900 --> 00:59:04.300 or ethnic groups or gendered groups, 1117 00:59:04.480 --> 00:59:06.360 where people begin to think that, 1118 00:59:06.400 --> 00:59:09.620 oh, well, maybe there is some truth to that idea after all. 1119 00:59:09.960 --> 00:59:12.420 Those kinds of things would be infelicitous. 1120 00:59:12.420 --> 00:59:14.120 In those kinds of instances, shaming... 1121 00:59:14.120 --> 00:59:15.280 I wouldn't support shaming. 1122 00:59:15.340 --> 00:59:17.460 I don't support the use of vilification, 1123 00:59:17.780 --> 00:59:18.620 the use of hate speech, 1124 00:59:18.760 --> 00:59:20.020 the use of harmful words 1125 00:59:20.020 --> 00:59:21.420 to try and... 1126 00:59:22.420 --> 00:59:25.080 ..to try and promote better behaviour. 1127 00:59:25.220 --> 00:59:27.080 And I guess I'm talking about shaming 1128 00:59:27.080 --> 00:59:29.100 as a mechanism for promoting better behaviour. 1129 00:59:30.840 --> 00:59:33.060 Shaming can also be infelicitous, of course, 1130 00:59:33.080 --> 00:59:35.920 when the person or the institution you're trying to shame 1131 00:59:35.920 --> 00:59:39.760 demonstrates an incapacity to be shamed. 1132 00:59:39.780 --> 00:59:42.400 And I guess the international pre-examination 1133 00:59:42.420 --> 00:59:43.080 of the issue of shaming is another example, 1134 00:59:43.200 --> 00:59:45.740 is the international pressure on Japan to cease whaling, 1135 00:59:46.480 --> 00:59:48.300 which is apparently having, 1136 00:59:48.500 --> 00:59:50.700 at least to my knowledge, very little effect. 1137 00:59:50.900 --> 00:59:53.140 There doesn't seem to be much responsiveness there 1138 00:59:53.140 --> 00:59:57.680 to international sensitivities around the killing of whales. 1139 00:59:58.320 --> 01:00:02.040 So I don't want to present an all-or-nothing position 1140 01:00:02.040 --> 01:00:03.520 on the question of shaming. 1141 01:00:03.940 --> 01:00:06.720 I do think that there are important questions to be asked 1142 01:00:06.720 --> 01:00:09.640 and answered over shaming as an individual mechanism 1143 01:00:09.640 --> 01:00:11.640 with individuals within a small circle. 1144 01:00:12.420 --> 01:00:12.520 whether it's in relation to the use of alcohol 1145 01:00:12.520 --> 01:00:13.580 with drink-driving offences, 1146 01:00:13.640 --> 01:00:16.440 and shaming at a writ large 1147 01:00:16.440 --> 01:00:18.460 when it's directed against an institution 1148 01:00:18.460 --> 01:00:20.180 or directed against a government. 1149 01:00:20.420 --> 01:00:23.400 The type of shaming that goes on in, for example, 1150 01:00:23.400 --> 01:00:24.920 political cartooning 1151 01:00:24.920 --> 01:00:28.120 is felicitous partly in the sense 1152 01:00:28.120 --> 01:00:30.140 that it does provide a release of tension, 1153 01:00:30.760 --> 01:00:34.520 even though we know that the election result in 2001 1154 01:00:34.520 --> 01:00:36.540 was the election result that we got, 1155 01:00:36.540 --> 01:00:40.700 and that the then government's policies on asylum seekers 1156 01:00:40.700 --> 01:00:43.760 had appeared to have an enormous amount of support 1157 01:00:43.760 --> 01:00:45.580 as demonstrated in the opinion polls. 1158 01:00:46.020 --> 01:00:48.120 Nevertheless, those of us who were horrified 1159 01:00:48.120 --> 01:00:50.440 and who were just horrified 1160 01:00:50.440 --> 01:00:52.740 by the Australian government's position during that time 1161 01:00:52.740 --> 01:00:55.180 found great solace in those cartoons. 1162 01:00:55.600 --> 01:00:58.640 And we were able to email them to each other 1163 01:00:58.640 --> 01:01:00.440 and to show them to our students in universities 1164 01:01:00.440 --> 01:01:02.960 and to use them in all kinds of ways 1165 01:01:02.960 --> 01:01:06.440 to continue the dialogue in a constructive way. 1166 01:01:06.440 --> 01:01:10.640 To try and bring to bear concerns about human rights and so on. 1167 01:01:10.700 --> 01:01:13.280 So even though the cartoons didn't change the election result, 1168 01:01:13.580 --> 01:01:16.700 I think that they were directed against the state, 1169 01:01:16.860 --> 01:01:19.300 they were directed against an incredibly powerful institution, 1170 01:01:20.140 --> 01:01:23.980 which, because it is the most powerful institution in society, 1171 01:01:24.260 --> 01:01:27.400 ought to tolerate a great deal of criticism 1172 01:01:27.400 --> 01:01:32.340 and a great deal of vehemence when it's directed against it. 1173 01:01:32.420 --> 01:01:34.940 And it can handle it. The state can handle it. 1174 01:01:35.000 --> 01:01:36.200 The government can handle it. 1175 01:01:36.440 --> 01:01:39.420 So when the object is the state or the government, 1176 01:01:39.600 --> 01:01:41.860 then there are far fewer limits. 1177 01:01:42.160 --> 01:01:44.880 When the object of shaming is an individual, 1178 01:01:45.080 --> 01:01:46.580 or particularly a child, 1179 01:01:46.660 --> 01:01:49.260 or a perpetrator of a crime 1180 01:01:49.260 --> 01:01:51.760 who may have a personal history 1181 01:01:52.440 --> 01:01:53.860 that needs to be taken into account, 1182 01:01:54.020 --> 01:01:56.660 then we need to take, I think, a great deal more care. 1183 01:01:57.160 --> 01:01:58.860 So that's what I think. 1184 01:01:58.900 --> 01:02:02.360 I think that shaming is potentially a powerful mechanism, 1185 01:02:02.380 --> 01:02:05.340 both for the release of individual... 1186 01:02:06.440 --> 01:02:09.900 ..of tension and the release of those creative ideas 1187 01:02:09.900 --> 01:02:11.780 when it's directed against a powerful institution, 1188 01:02:12.120 --> 01:02:16.360 and can be used constructively in individual situations 1189 01:02:16.360 --> 01:02:19.860 as long as we take care and remember always 1190 01:02:20.440 --> 01:02:22.580 that speech is very, very powerful. 1191 01:02:22.840 --> 01:02:23.740 Thank you. 1192 01:02:31.240 --> 01:02:33.400 Well, this is your festival, 1193 01:02:33.460 --> 01:02:36.420 and so we'll have as much time as we can 1194 01:02:36.420 --> 01:02:38.900 for questions, but I have one question 1195 01:02:38.900 --> 01:02:41.800 that follows on very directly 1196 01:02:41.800 --> 01:02:42.940 from what you've just said, Catherine. 1197 01:02:43.280 --> 01:02:44.980 The thing that gives me most satisfaction, 1198 01:02:45.240 --> 01:02:49.780 and I think this chimes with Shakira's point as well, 1199 01:02:50.380 --> 01:02:52.140 is the shaming of the shameless. 1200 01:02:54.700 --> 01:02:55.660 People who... 1201 01:02:56.420 --> 01:02:58.480 ..people or institutions that should be ashamed 1202 01:02:58.480 --> 01:03:00.560 of what they're doing. 1203 01:03:00.700 --> 01:03:02.900 That is something I would very, very... 1204 01:03:03.420 --> 01:03:04.800 ..be very loath to give up 1205 01:03:04.800 --> 01:03:08.020 as a mechanism in public debate, 1206 01:03:08.340 --> 01:03:10.480 in free speech. 1207 01:03:10.900 --> 01:03:14.700 And what I think it is, is primarily a matter of power. 1208 01:03:15.920 --> 01:03:18.620 And I've had this discussion with students over the years 1209 01:03:18.620 --> 01:03:19.620 discussing satire. 1210 01:03:20.060 --> 01:03:21.720 Everything should be ridiculed, they say, 1211 01:03:21.840 --> 01:03:22.640 but what about X? 1212 01:03:22.860 --> 01:03:23.780 Oh, no, not that. 1213 01:03:23.980 --> 01:03:27.020 And I think, ethically, the position I've come to 1214 01:03:27.020 --> 01:03:30.420 is that the powerful may be attacked 1215 01:03:30.420 --> 01:03:33.340 by almost whatever means you can come up with. 1216 01:03:33.580 --> 01:03:34.200 Does any... 1217 01:03:34.200 --> 01:03:35.300 Do any of you have... 1218 01:03:35.300 --> 01:03:37.040 Whereas a powerless should not be. 1219 01:03:37.380 --> 01:03:39.600 Now, that's an ethical thing, it's not a formal thing, 1220 01:03:39.700 --> 01:03:41.460 but I think it's something I believe quite strongly. 1221 01:03:41.780 --> 01:03:45.200 Do any of you have a response to that? 1222 01:03:45.260 --> 01:03:48.220 Is shaming the shameless still not very... 1223 01:03:48.220 --> 01:03:51.380 ..still not efficacious, not worth doing longer? 1224 01:03:52.920 --> 01:03:56.800 Well, I look at the kind of satire 1225 01:03:56.800 --> 01:03:58.380 that goes on in the United States. 1226 01:03:58.460 --> 01:04:00.820 I'm a great fan of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. 1227 01:04:00.980 --> 01:04:02.440 I'm sure you get those over here. 1228 01:04:03.080 --> 01:04:03.520 Um... 1229 01:04:04.200 --> 01:04:07.580 But I think what happens with the political satire... 1230 01:04:07.580 --> 01:04:09.520 Of course, I believe in free speech 1231 01:04:09.520 --> 01:04:11.960 and I think we should use satire 1232 01:04:11.960 --> 01:04:15.260 to heighten people's awareness of what's going on, 1233 01:04:15.440 --> 01:04:18.640 but what happens with the left in the United States 1234 01:04:18.640 --> 01:04:20.980 is that we all feel better, 1235 01:04:21.120 --> 01:04:23.160 as you were kind of suggesting earlier, 1236 01:04:23.420 --> 01:04:25.300 and then we become ineffective. 1237 01:04:25.860 --> 01:04:27.140 And so I... 1238 01:04:27.140 --> 01:04:31.700 I really think that ridicule is too easy. 1239 01:04:31.880 --> 01:04:33.840 I think that satire is too easy. 1240 01:04:33.840 --> 01:04:35.880 What we need to do is... 1241 01:04:35.880 --> 01:04:39.700 Academics certainly need not to just analyse satire 1242 01:04:39.700 --> 01:04:41.460 but be public intellectuals, 1243 01:04:41.460 --> 01:04:44.840 as you are encouraging people to be in this festival. 1244 01:04:45.520 --> 01:04:46.120 Um... 1245 01:04:46.120 --> 01:04:49.320 And I think that we need to do much harder work. 1246 01:04:49.520 --> 01:04:55.240 It's just too easy to shame or ridicule, be critical. 1247 01:04:55.500 --> 01:04:59.660 I think that we need to really encourage people 1248 01:04:59.660 --> 01:05:02.220 to take positive action and go out there and get that power. 1249 01:05:03.840 --> 01:05:08.300 I dispute the idea that ridicule is easy, actually. 1250 01:05:09.260 --> 01:05:10.960 Ridicule can take a lot of hard work. 1251 01:05:11.560 --> 01:05:12.320 Believe me. 1252 01:05:15.940 --> 01:05:22.260 I don't think satire or shaming aim to undermine power. 1253 01:05:22.520 --> 01:05:24.780 They aim to deflate bogus authority. 1254 01:05:25.600 --> 01:05:27.460 If it's just power you're at, 1255 01:05:27.600 --> 01:05:29.660 no amount of satire will do anything. 1256 01:05:31.120 --> 01:05:33.820 What satire does is unmanageable. 1257 01:05:33.840 --> 01:05:36.340 It can mask, deflate and so on. 1258 01:05:36.520 --> 01:05:39.300 So it depends on people making a distinction 1259 01:05:39.300 --> 01:05:40.760 between authority and power 1260 01:05:40.760 --> 01:05:44.360 and recognising that it's bogus in a particular case. 1261 01:05:44.780 --> 01:05:46.320 And it seems to me very often, 1262 01:05:46.400 --> 01:05:49.280 even though the person who's the object of satire 1263 01:05:49.280 --> 01:05:53.880 may feel ashamed seeing a cartoon of herself or himself. 1264 01:05:54.480 --> 01:05:57.760 But that doesn't mean the aim of this satire was to shame. 1265 01:05:58.120 --> 01:06:02.560 It may have just been to deflate and expose and so on. 1266 01:06:04.040 --> 01:06:06.860 I agree with Catherine 1267 01:06:06.860 --> 01:06:10.180 that in certain kinds of contexts 1268 01:06:10.180 --> 01:06:15.780 to make somebody humbly acknowledge the shameful... 1269 01:06:15.780 --> 01:06:21.500 To make someone humbly acknowledge the shameful thing that they've done 1270 01:06:21.500 --> 01:06:23.320 is a good thing. 1271 01:06:24.420 --> 01:06:27.760 And indeed, insofar as I was saying those things 1272 01:06:27.760 --> 01:06:29.060 about collective responsibility, 1273 01:06:29.400 --> 01:06:32.380 I was trying to argue that the argument for reconciliation 1274 01:06:32.380 --> 01:06:34.880 ought to bring Australians to awareness 1275 01:06:35.540 --> 01:06:38.380 of the shame that they have been caught up in 1276 01:06:38.380 --> 01:06:41.000 by being Australians in the crimes of the rats. 1277 01:06:41.300 --> 01:06:42.100 So I don't... 1278 01:06:42.100 --> 01:06:45.820 I distrusted institutionally when I was... 1279 01:06:45.820 --> 01:06:48.700 Because I suppose... 1280 01:06:48.700 --> 01:06:50.940 I do have this idea about free-floating... 1281 01:06:50.940 --> 01:06:53.780 I mean, I believe in this theory of free-floating malice. 1282 01:06:53.940 --> 01:06:57.800 Human beings have an enormous propensity for indignation, 1283 01:06:57.860 --> 01:07:00.440 for pointing the finger and so on. 1284 01:07:00.620 --> 01:07:02.360 And so I just don't trust it. 1285 01:07:02.380 --> 01:07:07.940 I've seen these theories about what teachers should do 1286 01:07:07.940 --> 01:07:12.400 enlisting kids to do to kids who are misbehaving. 1287 01:07:12.540 --> 01:07:13.420 I hate it. 1288 01:07:13.740 --> 01:07:15.140 I really hate it. 1289 01:07:16.820 --> 01:07:19.280 But I suppose it depends how... 1290 01:07:20.280 --> 01:07:23.120 whether you do have this sort of distrust 1291 01:07:23.120 --> 01:07:26.480 of deep human propensity to point fingers. 1292 01:07:26.760 --> 01:07:28.920 And I think that's got nothing to do with moral seriousness. 1293 01:07:29.980 --> 01:07:31.040 You know, my... 1294 01:07:31.040 --> 01:07:32.360 I say this because I'm a man. 1295 01:07:32.360 --> 01:07:34.480 Some of you have probably read Romulus, my father. 1296 01:07:34.620 --> 01:07:37.020 He was one of the most morally serious people I knew. 1297 01:07:37.300 --> 01:07:40.640 I described him as someone for whom nothing mattered in life, 1298 01:07:40.820 --> 01:07:42.660 so much as to live a decent life, 1299 01:07:42.740 --> 01:07:44.240 where nothing really meant nothing. 1300 01:07:45.300 --> 01:07:48.760 But he was never a man to point fingers. 1301 01:07:48.900 --> 01:07:51.460 He would call you a crook or a liar or whatever, 1302 01:07:51.960 --> 01:07:53.740 speaking that plainly and simply, 1303 01:07:53.820 --> 01:07:56.860 and then invite you to dine with him. 1304 01:07:57.000 --> 01:07:58.880 There was never a sense of exclusion, 1305 01:07:59.520 --> 01:08:02.140 which I think shaped the punitive institution, 1306 01:08:02.360 --> 01:08:04.680 of shame, intrinsically aims at. 1307 01:08:04.900 --> 01:08:07.000 It's saying, hey, look, come... 1308 01:08:07.000 --> 01:08:09.320 It always involves getting people together and saying, 1309 01:08:09.340 --> 01:08:12.460 look, look, look, I think that's very dangerous, 1310 01:08:12.740 --> 01:08:15.560 even though I don't deny that there could be consequences. 1311 01:08:15.560 --> 01:08:18.760 But I notice you did say you have to be very, very careful. 1312 01:08:19.580 --> 01:08:21.400 I think we can't be careful enough. 1313 01:08:23.700 --> 01:08:27.100 We have people make their way to the microphone 1314 01:08:27.100 --> 01:08:28.620 if they have any questions. 1315 01:08:29.820 --> 01:08:32.040 And please make them questions at this stage. 1316 01:08:33.440 --> 01:08:34.080 Hi. 1317 01:08:35.780 --> 01:08:38.300 One example that comes to my mind 1318 01:08:38.300 --> 01:08:41.960 of shaming in Australian public policy is unemployment. 1319 01:08:43.480 --> 01:08:47.560 I think unemployed people are subjected to ritual humiliation 1320 01:08:47.560 --> 01:08:50.960 on a weekly basis or a fortnightly basis, I'm not sure, 1321 01:08:51.000 --> 01:08:54.240 when they have to turn up in person and wait in line 1322 01:08:54.240 --> 01:08:59.020 and hand in a form and have it signed by people, 1323 01:08:59.100 --> 01:09:02.340 whereas other kinds of social support groups, 1324 01:09:02.340 --> 01:09:03.700 like social support can be provided via the internet, 1325 01:09:03.880 --> 01:09:05.520 there's different sorts of treatment 1326 01:09:05.520 --> 01:09:07.260 for the way that we treat unemployed people. 1327 01:09:07.540 --> 01:09:10.800 And the argument that's usually given for this treatment 1328 01:09:10.800 --> 01:09:14.760 is that it would dissuade people from being on unemployment benefits 1329 01:09:14.760 --> 01:09:18.320 and that it would reduce the number of people who are unemployed. 1330 01:09:19.140 --> 01:09:21.120 And based on the discussion today, 1331 01:09:21.220 --> 01:09:23.540 my impression is that it would have no such effect 1332 01:09:23.540 --> 01:09:27.780 that the shaming rituals that are included in this kind of policy 1333 01:09:27.780 --> 01:09:31.320 are just nasty, degrading and humiliating. 1334 01:09:32.340 --> 01:09:33.260 For vulnerable people, 1335 01:09:34.160 --> 01:09:35.860 because unemployed people are vulnerable, 1336 01:09:36.420 --> 01:09:37.900 with no positive effect. 1337 01:09:38.480 --> 01:09:41.940 And so I would guess that the implications of what's been said today 1338 01:09:41.940 --> 01:09:44.440 for public policy regarding unemployment would be 1339 01:09:45.020 --> 01:09:48.340 that it should change and not shame people anymore, 1340 01:09:48.420 --> 01:09:52.520 but I'd like to ask you all what you think about that. 1341 01:09:53.380 --> 01:09:54.080 Thank you. 1342 01:09:54.400 --> 01:09:55.500 Who wants that one? 1343 01:09:56.580 --> 01:09:57.540 I'll have the go. 1344 01:10:00.820 --> 01:10:02.220 I agree absolutely. 1345 01:10:02.280 --> 01:10:02.320 Thank you. 1346 01:10:02.340 --> 01:10:03.200 Completely. 1347 01:10:05.040 --> 01:10:06.180 Yes, I do too. 1348 01:10:06.600 --> 01:10:09.120 It's a degrading... 1349 01:10:09.120 --> 01:10:09.720 Sorry. 1350 01:10:09.840 --> 01:10:13.740 It's a degrading experience to have to go into a Centrelink office 1351 01:10:14.400 --> 01:10:18.920 and one wonders how much of that experience is designed to degrade 1352 01:10:18.920 --> 01:10:21.640 and how much of it is just coincidental. 1353 01:10:22.120 --> 01:10:25.240 I do believe that there are some individuals 1354 01:10:25.980 --> 01:10:29.960 that can depend a little bit on the person who you encounter at the counter. 1355 01:10:30.220 --> 01:10:32.320 Some of them seem to be a little more human, 1356 01:10:32.320 --> 01:10:34.220 and some of them seem to be a little less humane. 1357 01:10:34.360 --> 01:10:37.540 But the problem within those institutions 1358 01:10:38.320 --> 01:10:41.900 can be exacerbated by the bigger policy in the background. 1359 01:10:42.300 --> 01:10:46.200 And once the concept of mutual obligation was introduced 1360 01:10:46.200 --> 01:10:51.220 into Australian public policy in relation to unemployment benefits, 1361 01:10:51.380 --> 01:10:53.060 that is, if we're going to give you money, 1362 01:10:53.160 --> 01:10:54.800 you have to do something in exchange, 1363 01:10:55.380 --> 01:10:59.640 and that was a significant shift away from the previous conception, 1364 01:10:59.760 --> 01:11:01.060 which was if you're unemployed, 1365 01:11:01.060 --> 01:11:03.780 then the state has a responsibility to provide you 1366 01:11:03.780 --> 01:11:05.280 with at least enough money to survive. 1367 01:11:05.860 --> 01:11:06.620 And then that... 1368 01:11:06.620 --> 01:11:08.960 So that shifted into mutual obligation. 1369 01:11:09.340 --> 01:11:12.100 We're giving you something, so you have to do things in return. 1370 01:11:12.260 --> 01:11:15.280 And I think those kind of big-picture policy backgrounds 1371 01:11:15.280 --> 01:11:17.440 can exacerbate that kind of degradation. 1372 01:11:17.780 --> 01:11:20.060 We saw the same thing in the Department of Immigration 1373 01:11:21.040 --> 01:11:26.240 during the worst years of the Tampa and refugees and asylum seeker 1374 01:11:26.240 --> 01:11:30.920 and Australian citizens themselves being locked up in detention centres. 1375 01:11:30.920 --> 01:11:32.800 And very degrading practices. 1376 01:11:33.020 --> 01:11:35.220 And there was a background policy framework 1377 01:11:35.220 --> 01:11:40.760 which was buttressing those kind of behaviours at the coalface. 1378 01:11:41.000 --> 01:11:43.400 So when the policy is at its harshest, 1379 01:11:43.400 --> 01:11:47.880 those behaviours at the coalface are unsurprising, 1380 01:11:47.920 --> 01:11:50.120 and I agree with you, very degrading. 1381 01:11:51.520 --> 01:11:54.660 It seems to me that most of what's been addressed today 1382 01:11:54.660 --> 01:11:57.080 is shame as it applies to an individual, 1383 01:11:57.220 --> 01:12:00.620 whether it's from another individual or by an institution. 1384 01:12:00.620 --> 01:12:00.900 So... 1385 01:12:00.920 --> 01:12:30.860 I think the boss has been very bossy about the boss 1386 01:12:30.860 --> 01:12:35.280 projected to them, but the rest of the group fully accepts and agrees 1387 01:12:35.840 --> 01:12:39.380 shame comes from the enculturation that we live with all the time. 1388 01:12:39.500 --> 01:12:40.580 How do we get around that? 1389 01:12:42.760 --> 01:12:44.480 Who wants to talk about it? 1390 01:12:44.560 --> 01:12:47.680 I mean, shaming is deep in our culture. 1391 01:12:47.700 --> 01:12:50.200 I don't personally think it's possible to be a parent 1392 01:12:50.200 --> 01:12:51.460 without using it occasionally. 1393 01:12:55.280 --> 01:12:58.620 Look, we're running two things together, it seems to me. 1394 01:12:58.620 --> 01:13:02.080 I don't deny they run into one another. 1395 01:13:02.260 --> 01:13:06.520 But one is, let's say, arguing from the pulpit, let's say, 1396 01:13:06.600 --> 01:13:09.520 that we have done something shameful. 1397 01:13:10.640 --> 01:13:16.800 Now, I don't think of that as necessarily a shame. 1398 01:13:17.100 --> 01:13:24.100 I mean, the direction of attention is on getting people morally to understand 1399 01:13:24.100 --> 01:13:26.500 the significance of what they've done. 1400 01:13:27.100 --> 01:13:28.600 And if as a result... 1401 01:13:28.600 --> 01:13:34.440 matter of fact, I actually think that shame is not just an emotion, it's a way of actually 1402 01:13:35.000 --> 01:13:40.780 apprehending something. It's a way of coming to understand the significance of what one has done. 1403 01:13:43.000 --> 01:13:49.880 So I don't think of that as shaming in the sense in which I was objecting to it. 1404 01:13:50.340 --> 01:13:55.020 And indeed I agree with Catherine, it's very very important 1405 01:13:56.400 --> 01:14:03.240 that we feel, that we recognise through our shame the significance of what we've done in certain contexts. 1406 01:14:03.440 --> 01:14:09.620 And sometimes it requires other people to show us, obviously. I just don't trust its institutionalisation. 1407 01:14:11.440 --> 01:14:14.620 Anyone else? Thank you. 1408 01:14:15.780 --> 01:14:20.200 Someone I can't recall now once wrote that you can't hate someone for their own good. 1409 01:14:20.340 --> 01:14:24.000 So maybe we can adapt this to you can't shame someone for their own good, 1410 01:14:24.080 --> 01:14:25.000 but perhaps you can be a bit more honest about it. 1411 01:14:25.020 --> 01:14:27.140 I think you can shame them for the betterment of others. 1412 01:14:27.360 --> 01:14:32.040 So for example, for the Centrelink thing you can't shame an unemployed person for their own good, 1413 01:14:32.080 --> 01:14:35.180 but you could shame the structures that keep them in that position, 1414 01:14:35.340 --> 01:14:42.100 or for overweight people who can't buy clothes or fashionable clothes because they're not seen as being part of the correct norm. 1415 01:14:42.300 --> 01:14:44.760 You can shame the industries rather than the people for being fat. 1416 01:14:45.800 --> 01:14:52.580 And the most pressing example I can think of that recently is that of Claire and Matthew Johns and all their rugby boys, 1417 01:14:52.700 --> 01:14:54.960 that much of the public reaction to Claire was, 1418 01:14:54.960 --> 01:14:59.420 that she was a slut and that she should have known better and that she shouldn't have been in that position. 1419 01:14:59.780 --> 01:15:03.040 And obviously that's not true and it's not going to achieve anything, 1420 01:15:03.200 --> 01:15:09.140 but Johns and all of his friends were excused because of the place that they occupy in Australian culture. 1421 01:15:09.440 --> 01:15:12.500 And I think that we should be able to shame their behaviour, 1422 01:15:12.640 --> 01:15:17.860 not just because it's reprehensible, but because of this celebration that they enjoy 1423 01:15:17.860 --> 01:15:24.940 and will continue to enjoy in spite of what they've done and that they're defended because of this place and culture. 1424 01:15:24.940 --> 01:15:28.520 So if we can outstrip celebration with shame, 1425 01:15:28.700 --> 01:15:36.280 surely we can have some part in changing this kind of culture that exists within rugby or within unemployed people or within fashion. 1426 01:15:36.840 --> 01:15:37.960 Think about that. 1427 01:15:42.940 --> 01:15:50.600 So this is sort of, this is a version of the idea of killing a deserter 1428 01:15:50.600 --> 01:15:54.920 to encourage others, shame someone, to encourage the others to be better. 1429 01:15:54.940 --> 01:15:56.760 Who wants to go at this? 1430 01:15:57.460 --> 01:15:59.180 I'll have a brief go at it. 1431 01:15:59.260 --> 01:16:02.860 But there was, it was interesting around the Matthew Johns thing 1432 01:16:02.860 --> 01:16:11.480 because there was an attempt to shame the other players who had been involved in those incidents to come forward. 1433 01:16:12.360 --> 01:16:15.580 And in fact I think that was a worthy attempt, 1434 01:16:16.860 --> 01:16:22.480 but I'm not surprised that it failed because there's such a closing of ranks around, 1435 01:16:23.340 --> 01:16:24.920 in some particular way, 1436 01:16:24.940 --> 01:16:27.700 in particular sort of cultural groups within Australian society 1437 01:16:27.700 --> 01:16:33.620 and well-paid, very prominent football players are a group that is well protected 1438 01:16:33.620 --> 01:16:36.840 and a group that closes ranks and a group that doesn't, 1439 01:16:37.940 --> 01:16:43.300 and that has a very, very strong internal code that you don't dob in your mates 1440 01:16:43.300 --> 01:16:48.400 and you don't tell things, you don't talk about things publicly if they can be dealt with in-house. 1441 01:16:48.600 --> 01:16:53.800 So that kind of closing of the ranks prevented the shaming 1442 01:16:53.800 --> 01:17:00.380 from producing confessions from other people who'd been involved in essentially what were alleged to be criminal acts. 1443 01:17:01.200 --> 01:17:04.280 And that is one of the difficulties I suppose when you try, 1444 01:17:04.360 --> 01:17:07.300 that's another example of the unshameable, 1445 01:17:07.420 --> 01:17:16.200 that no matter how horrendous the crime and no matter how awful the circumstances that people alleged to have taken place, 1446 01:17:16.560 --> 01:17:22.300 that that group of football players closed ranks and was unable to be shamed. 1447 01:17:22.300 --> 01:17:28.780 And I was actually, at the time, I remember being a little bit impressed with the attempts to get them to break ranks. 1448 01:17:28.860 --> 01:17:34.980 It seemed to me that after the culmination of years of scandal around football players and their behaviour towards women, 1449 01:17:35.040 --> 01:17:41.680 that maybe we finally had a scandal that was big enough that was going to allow some of those strictures to fall away 1450 01:17:41.680 --> 01:17:43.480 and it didn't happen.