WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.840 Good afternoon and welcome. Welcome to all you marvellous Adelaide people, 2 00:00:03.980 --> 00:00:08.120 the literal thousands of you that have come, and our interstate visitors as well. 3 00:00:08.680 --> 00:00:16.200 After these three days, need we ask why Adelaide's the Australian heart and motherland of festivals? 4 00:00:16.440 --> 00:00:18.140 You are the answer. 5 00:00:24.280 --> 00:00:28.480 I'm Warwick Fraser, and let me begin by acknowledging the traditional owners, 6 00:00:28.480 --> 00:00:33.060 the Kaurna people, who are the custodians of the land upon which we meet 7 00:00:33.060 --> 00:00:36.140 and have met so fruitfully these past three days. 8 00:00:36.880 --> 00:00:43.020 Now, on Thursday night, our favourite fellow travelling lapsed Catholic, 9 00:00:43.220 --> 00:00:48.860 Philip Adams, all in black, started off with a panel on fear, 10 00:00:49.080 --> 00:00:51.500 called Disquiet on the Western Front. 11 00:00:52.420 --> 00:00:56.540 And now, Sunday, in this very clerical-seeming building, 12 00:00:56.700 --> 00:00:58.200 three days on, well, 13 00:00:58.480 --> 00:01:02.620 we've done the dark analysis now, and now it's time for the, if you'll forgive me, 14 00:01:02.660 --> 00:01:04.380 the Wattle, the Wattle Bright Synthesis. 15 00:01:06.980 --> 00:01:11.700 I haven't told Philip about this yet, but both of us dress in black, 16 00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:15.060 but for the next 12 months, both of us are going to be wearing this as a sandwich broad. 17 00:01:19.520 --> 00:01:21.100 Parading around the countryside. 18 00:01:21.960 --> 00:01:25.500 Our very distinguished panel, all five of them here, are doers. 19 00:01:25.500 --> 00:01:28.240 They're front foot people, and whether they play the game or not, 20 00:01:28.240 --> 00:01:31.420 you could call them sort of opening batsmen and women of the intellect. 21 00:01:31.640 --> 00:01:36.780 And they're going to give us their take this evening on the shape of things to come. 22 00:01:37.420 --> 00:01:39.600 So this is the hope end of the festival. 23 00:01:39.660 --> 00:01:43.840 This is the optimist, the sage, realist springboard session. 24 00:01:44.420 --> 00:01:48.200 We've asked them all just what might come to pass. 25 00:01:48.380 --> 00:01:50.000 Let your mind run over this. 26 00:01:50.100 --> 00:01:55.640 What might come to pass if we act wisely, if we are fortunate, 27 00:01:55.820 --> 00:01:58.220 if we are canny in life? 28 00:01:58.240 --> 00:02:00.080 And what might come to pass if we are strategic enough and strategic enough 29 00:02:00.080 --> 00:02:01.920 to concert our energies? 30 00:02:02.040 --> 00:02:04.080 Just what might we make? 31 00:02:04.580 --> 00:02:10.340 I said all our panel were peculiarly suited to this concluding gathering task 32 00:02:10.340 --> 00:02:13.780 because they are, all five of them, they really are players. 33 00:02:13.940 --> 00:02:17.700 They're builders, they're planners, they're tacticians, they're movers. 34 00:02:17.980 --> 00:02:22.360 They have answers to that question that always comes up at the end of festivals like these. 35 00:02:22.420 --> 00:02:25.240 People will always come up and say, okay, you've told us what's wrong. 36 00:02:25.320 --> 00:02:26.120 Now what do we do? 37 00:02:26.120 --> 00:02:28.020 These five have answers. 38 00:02:28.500 --> 00:02:30.520 So let me introduce them to you. 39 00:02:31.200 --> 00:02:37.540 George Monbiot, writer, great exploratory traveller and activist, environmentalist, 40 00:02:37.560 --> 00:02:40.540 nonconformist thinker, if you'll forgive me for saying it, George, 41 00:02:40.620 --> 00:02:42.580 in that great British tradition. 42 00:02:43.280 --> 00:02:48.320 His most recent book, The Age of Consent, is a, well, it's literally a blueprint 43 00:02:48.320 --> 00:02:51.660 for revolutionary change and it will cause trouble. 44 00:02:51.820 --> 00:02:52.840 It will certainly cause him trouble. 45 00:02:53.080 --> 00:02:55.680 But then George is always in trouble it seems. 46 00:02:55.680 --> 00:02:58.460 And Kenya nearly killed him. 47 00:02:58.500 --> 00:02:59.900 Indonesia would like to, I think. 48 00:03:00.800 --> 00:03:04.480 And George, look, as an Adelaide native, I have to really apologise. 49 00:03:04.660 --> 00:03:06.220 We just haven't delivered the goods. 50 00:03:06.400 --> 00:03:10.280 I know George has been finding his fill down in the fish stalls in the Adelaide market 51 00:03:10.280 --> 00:03:16.300 and we haven't managed to deliver one lousy, not one single lousy, dodgy oyster yet. 52 00:03:16.920 --> 00:03:18.760 But if he stays, maybe we can do it. 53 00:03:19.100 --> 00:03:23.680 On his left, Unity Dahl, Botswana, High Court judge, human rights activist, 54 00:03:23.680 --> 00:03:29.720 and advocate for all her people, but so articulately and so necessarily for women. 55 00:03:29.840 --> 00:03:31.680 Women in Botswana, women everywhere. 56 00:03:32.880 --> 00:03:36.220 Unity, the lawyer, is also a novelist. 57 00:03:36.320 --> 00:03:38.320 She can do this double act. 58 00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:42.940 She can be Atticus Finch, but she can also do Atticus Finch. 59 00:03:43.780 --> 00:03:45.040 Don't you know what I'm talking about? 60 00:03:46.040 --> 00:03:46.560 Good. 61 00:03:48.380 --> 00:03:52.720 And I suspect that many people like me around the world will come to understand 62 00:03:52.720 --> 00:03:56.140 the history and the experience of folk in Botswana 63 00:03:56.140 --> 00:03:59.700 because Unity has found this powerful narrative voice 64 00:03:59.700 --> 00:04:03.580 in which to body forth those people and that experience. 65 00:04:04.600 --> 00:04:10.040 Then John Braithwaite, social movement activist, Federation fellow and theorist, 66 00:04:10.060 --> 00:04:14.080 a mover behind much of the push for restorative justice, 67 00:04:14.440 --> 00:04:18.480 that positive alternative to our punitive retributivist systems. 68 00:04:19.160 --> 00:04:21.060 John's also one of those model academics, 69 00:04:21.180 --> 00:04:22.680 one of the people who lays a... 70 00:04:22.720 --> 00:04:24.460 a scrupulous research foundation 71 00:04:24.460 --> 00:04:27.260 and then takes those findings out into the community. 72 00:04:27.360 --> 00:04:29.240 Not just this community, but way beyond. 73 00:04:29.580 --> 00:04:33.460 And then Fiona Stanley, celebrated professor of paediatrics, 74 00:04:33.580 --> 00:04:36.280 researcher into, well, among many things, 75 00:04:36.500 --> 00:04:40.180 the prevention of birth defects and major neurological diseases, 76 00:04:40.900 --> 00:04:43.420 Australian of the Year, which is great to see. 77 00:04:43.620 --> 00:04:47.160 And Fiona, how apt and how good it is to have you here, 78 00:04:47.320 --> 00:04:51.920 the scientist here with us in this year when we're celebrating and assessing. 79 00:04:52.720 --> 00:04:54.820 And, of course, the extraordinary future implications 80 00:04:54.820 --> 00:04:57.020 of the discovery of the structure of DNA. 81 00:04:57.740 --> 00:05:00.560 And to round us out, way over there in the pink shirt, 82 00:05:00.700 --> 00:05:04.380 originally from Berkeley, but now Willis Distinguished Professor 83 00:05:04.380 --> 00:05:07.440 at the University of Wisconsin, Eric Olin Wright. 84 00:05:07.660 --> 00:05:08.660 Sounds like a... 85 00:05:08.660 --> 00:05:11.660 Sounds like someone that came in a boat and invaded Scotland, 86 00:05:11.720 --> 00:05:14.160 but you're telling me you've got no Norse ancestors, Eric, is that right? 87 00:05:14.380 --> 00:05:15.120 Yeah, he's a fake. 88 00:05:16.800 --> 00:05:19.060 Eric is a social theorist plus some. 89 00:05:19.260 --> 00:05:22.700 Since 1992, he's been director of the Realism Institute, 90 00:05:22.700 --> 00:05:23.440 a real utopias project, 91 00:05:23.740 --> 00:05:28.860 and a scan of his publications gives us some sense of the empirical base 92 00:05:28.860 --> 00:05:30.900 out of which he constructs his strategies. 93 00:05:31.700 --> 00:05:34.040 He's researched and he's written on class, 94 00:05:34.300 --> 00:05:37.460 on reconstructing Marxism, I wish you luck, 95 00:05:37.620 --> 00:05:40.700 on equality and democracy, and that's just for starters. 96 00:05:40.880 --> 00:05:42.480 Please welcome our five speakers. 97 00:05:43.880 --> 00:05:44.520 APPLAUSE 98 00:05:52.700 --> 00:05:52.960 Thank you very much. 99 00:05:52.960 --> 00:05:54.320 I'm going to ask George Monbiot to kick us off. 100 00:05:54.460 --> 00:05:56.720 This does look like a church and there are, as always, 101 00:05:57.280 --> 00:05:59.800 seats empty down the front, so come on down. 102 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:01.060 George, please kick us off. 103 00:06:04.260 --> 00:06:06.600 Thanks very much, Morag, and thanks, everyone, for coming along. 104 00:06:07.980 --> 00:06:10.180 I'm going to break the rules again. 105 00:06:11.600 --> 00:06:15.300 But in this case, because I am going to talk a fair bit about fear 106 00:06:15.300 --> 00:06:18.840 before I talk about hope, for two reasons. 107 00:06:18.980 --> 00:06:20.940 The first is that in my previous session, 108 00:06:20.940 --> 00:06:23.200 I was talking about my hopes for the future 109 00:06:23.200 --> 00:06:25.800 and I can hear the inward groans of those of you 110 00:06:25.800 --> 00:06:28.700 who think I might just step forward and repeat all that. 111 00:06:29.420 --> 00:06:32.860 But there's another reason, and it's an urgent one. 112 00:06:33.600 --> 00:06:37.460 And this is that I don't want any of you to leave this festival 113 00:06:37.460 --> 00:06:41.600 without crossing your heart and swearing to demand 114 00:06:41.600 --> 00:06:44.280 that the Howard government changes its policy 115 00:06:44.940 --> 00:06:49.280 on the most serious and the most pressing of all global issues. 116 00:06:49.920 --> 00:06:50.920 And I'm going to ask you to do that. 117 00:06:50.920 --> 00:06:52.240 I'm going to try and describe at the end of this 118 00:06:52.240 --> 00:06:56.540 why you, as Australians, are in a particularly powerful position 119 00:06:57.060 --> 00:07:02.280 to turn a situation of, certainly what I feel, tremendous fear, 120 00:07:02.880 --> 00:07:03.880 into one of hope. 121 00:07:05.880 --> 00:07:08.720 Now, you might believe that you've heard it all before, 122 00:07:08.920 --> 00:07:12.900 but the story I'm going to tell you is both a very old one 123 00:07:12.900 --> 00:07:14.380 and a very new one. 124 00:07:14.620 --> 00:07:18.740 I can tell you precisely how old it is, 251 million years, 125 00:07:18.740 --> 00:07:21.860 and precisely how new it is, three months. 126 00:07:22.620 --> 00:07:26.320 For the story of what happened 250 million years ago 127 00:07:26.320 --> 00:07:29.400 has now been told for the first time. 128 00:07:29.780 --> 00:07:33.220 And the staggering implications for ourselves 129 00:07:33.740 --> 00:07:35.580 are just beginning to sink in. 130 00:07:36.420 --> 00:07:40.720 Unless we understand what happened and act upon that intelligence, 131 00:07:41.720 --> 00:07:47.000 prehistory may very soon repeat itself, not as tragedy, but as catastrophe. 132 00:07:48.820 --> 00:07:50.280 Prehistory is divided into periods, 133 00:07:50.520 --> 00:07:52.480 and I want to talk about the Permian period, 134 00:07:52.660 --> 00:07:55.640 which is the one that ended 251 million years ago. 135 00:07:56.700 --> 00:08:00.340 Until recently, geologists had assumed that the changes which took place then 136 00:08:00.340 --> 00:08:01.960 were gradual and piecemeal. 137 00:08:02.420 --> 00:08:07.040 But in the year 2000, a precise date for the end of the period was established, 138 00:08:07.280 --> 00:08:10.800 which enabled them to draw direct comparisons between the rocks 139 00:08:10.800 --> 00:08:13.880 laid down at that time in different parts of the world. 140 00:08:15.200 --> 00:08:18.240 Having done so, they made a shattering discovery. 141 00:08:18.240 --> 00:08:24.040 In China, South Africa, Australia, Greenland, Russia, and Spitsbergen, 142 00:08:24.160 --> 00:08:28.120 the rocks record an almost identical sequence of events, 143 00:08:28.340 --> 00:08:30.760 taking place not gradually, but almost instantaneously. 144 00:08:31.260 --> 00:08:34.700 They showed that a cataclysm caused by natural processes 145 00:08:35.240 --> 00:08:37.180 almost brought life on Earth to an end. 146 00:08:38.020 --> 00:08:40.700 Now, three months ago, this is the new story, 147 00:08:40.940 --> 00:08:44.500 these discoveries and their implications were brought together in a new book, 148 00:08:45.240 --> 00:08:46.860 which is called When Life Nearly Died, 149 00:08:46.860 --> 00:08:49.560 written by a professor of paleontology called Michael Benton. 150 00:08:49.920 --> 00:08:52.960 And what Benton shows is that the marine sediments deposited 151 00:08:52.960 --> 00:08:55.840 at the end of the Permian period record two sudden changes. 152 00:08:56.360 --> 00:08:59.820 The first is that the red or green or grey rock, 153 00:08:59.980 --> 00:09:02.140 which was laid down in the presence of oxygen, 154 00:09:02.420 --> 00:09:07.080 is suddenly replaced by black muds of the kind deposited when oxygen is absent. 155 00:09:07.840 --> 00:09:11.940 At the same time, an instant shift in the ratio of the isotopes, 156 00:09:11.960 --> 00:09:15.160 the alternative forms of carbon within the rocks, 157 00:09:15.160 --> 00:09:20.060 suggests a spectacular change in the concentration of atmospheric gases. 158 00:09:21.020 --> 00:09:26.820 On land, another dramatic transition has been dated to precisely the same time. 159 00:09:26.980 --> 00:09:32.060 In Russia and South Africa, you've got gently deposited mudstones and limestones 160 00:09:32.060 --> 00:09:36.920 suddenly giving way to massive dumps of pebbles and boulders. 161 00:09:37.500 --> 00:09:43.360 But the geological changes are minor by comparison to what happened to the animals and plants. 162 00:09:44.320 --> 00:09:48.360 The Permian was one of the most biologically diverse periods in the Earth's history. 163 00:09:48.780 --> 00:09:52.980 Herbivorous reptiles the size of rhinos were hunted through forests of tree ferns 164 00:09:52.980 --> 00:09:55.380 and canopy trees by sabre-toothed predators. 165 00:09:55.900 --> 00:09:59.520 At sea, there were massive coral reefs, among which lived great sharks, 166 00:09:59.720 --> 00:10:02.760 fish of all kinds, hundreds of mollusks and crustaceans. 167 00:10:03.100 --> 00:10:05.760 Then suddenly, there's almost nothing. 168 00:10:06.060 --> 00:10:08.460 The fossil record very nearly stops dead. 169 00:10:08.740 --> 00:10:13.340 The reefs die instantly and do not reappear on Earth for ten million years. 170 00:10:13.360 --> 00:10:16.560 All the large and medium-sized sharks disappear. 171 00:10:16.740 --> 00:10:20.940 So do most of the shelly species and even the great majority of the plankton. 172 00:10:21.500 --> 00:10:27.720 Among many classes of marine animals, the only survivors were those adapted to the near absence of oxygen. 173 00:10:28.400 --> 00:10:31.340 On land, the shift was even more severe. 174 00:10:31.700 --> 00:10:35.080 Plant life was almost eliminated from the Earth's surface. 175 00:10:35.380 --> 00:10:38.640 The four-footed animals, a category to which we belong, 176 00:10:38.820 --> 00:10:42.360 that's a foot, were very nearly exterminated. 177 00:10:42.360 --> 00:10:48.020 So far, only two fossil reptile species have been found anywhere on Earth 178 00:10:48.020 --> 00:10:50.440 which survived the end of the Permian. 179 00:10:50.900 --> 00:10:55.200 The world's surface came to be dominated by just one of these, an animal a bit like a pig. 180 00:10:55.300 --> 00:11:02.580 It became ubiquitous because nothing else was left to compete with it or to prey upon it. 181 00:11:03.560 --> 00:11:09.220 Altogether, Penton shows, some 90% of the Earth's species appear to have been wiped out. 182 00:11:09.300 --> 00:11:12.340 This represents by far the gravest of all species. 183 00:11:13.560 --> 00:11:20.640 The world's productivity, the total mass of biological matter, collapsed, almost wiped out completely. 184 00:11:21.740 --> 00:11:23.900 The ecosystems recovered very slowly. 185 00:11:24.200 --> 00:11:29.680 No coral reefs have been found anywhere on Earth in the rocks laid down over the following 10 million years. 186 00:11:30.600 --> 00:11:37.720 150 million years elapsed before the world once again became as biodiverse as it appears to have been in the Permian. 187 00:11:38.140 --> 00:11:39.200 So what happened? 188 00:11:40.160 --> 00:11:42.320 Well, some scientists have argued that the world's existence is not as diverse as it appears to have been in the Permian. 189 00:11:42.340 --> 00:11:47.300 The mass extinction was caused by a meteorite, but the evidence they put forward has now been discredited. 190 00:11:48.100 --> 00:11:50.860 There's a more persuasive case for a different explanation. 191 00:11:51.720 --> 00:11:55.960 For many years, geologists have been aware that at some point during or after the Permian, 192 00:11:56.040 --> 00:11:59.340 there was a series of gigantic volcanic eruptions in Siberia. 193 00:11:59.400 --> 00:12:02.800 The lava was dated properly for the first time in the early 1990s, 194 00:12:03.340 --> 00:12:08.120 and we now know that the principal explosions took place 251 million years ago, 195 00:12:08.220 --> 00:12:11.020 precisely at the point at which life was extinguished. 196 00:12:12.340 --> 00:12:17.800 Volcanoes produced two gases, sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide. 197 00:12:18.620 --> 00:12:23.800 The sulfur and the other effusions caused acid rain, but that would have bled from the atmosphere quite quickly. 198 00:12:24.420 --> 00:12:28.160 The carbon dioxide, on the other hand, would have persisted. 199 00:12:28.540 --> 00:12:32.820 By enhancing the greenhouse effect, it appears to have warmed the world sufficiently 200 00:12:33.340 --> 00:12:38.380 to have destabilized the super-concentrated frozen gas called methane hydrate, 201 00:12:38.480 --> 00:12:40.840 locked in sediments around the polar seas. 202 00:12:40.840 --> 00:12:47.120 The release of methane into the atmosphere explains the sudden shift in the carbon isotopes. 203 00:12:48.160 --> 00:12:51.320 Methane is an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. 204 00:12:51.820 --> 00:12:54.560 The result of its release was runaway global warming. 205 00:12:54.640 --> 00:12:57.980 A rise in temperature led to changes which raised the temperature further and so on. 206 00:12:58.400 --> 00:13:02.160 The warming appears, alongside the acid rain, to have killed the plants. 207 00:13:03.080 --> 00:13:04.940 Starvation then killed the animals. 208 00:13:06.740 --> 00:13:09.940 Global warming also seems to explain the geological changes. 209 00:13:10.120 --> 00:13:10.820 If the temperature changes, the climate changes. 210 00:13:10.840 --> 00:13:13.280 If the temperature of the surface waters near the poles increases, 211 00:13:13.440 --> 00:13:16.180 the circulation of marine currents slows down, 212 00:13:16.420 --> 00:13:18.860 which means that the ocean floor is deprived of oxygen. 213 00:13:19.420 --> 00:13:24.880 As the plants on land died, their roots would cease to hold together the soil and loose rock, 214 00:13:25.040 --> 00:13:28.380 with the result that erosion rates would have greatly increased. 215 00:13:29.500 --> 00:13:31.280 So how much warming took place? 216 00:13:32.100 --> 00:13:37.580 A sharp change in the ratio of the isotopes of oxygen permits us to reply with some precision. 217 00:13:38.240 --> 00:13:39.660 Six degrees centigrade. 218 00:13:41.220 --> 00:13:44.440 Benton does not make the obvious point, but it is there for everyone to see. 219 00:13:45.160 --> 00:13:49.880 Six degrees is the upper estimate produced by the UN scientific body, 220 00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:55.560 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for global warming by the end of this century. 221 00:13:56.140 --> 00:14:00.000 A conference of some of the world's leading atmospheric scientists in Berlin last month 222 00:14:00.560 --> 00:14:03.840 concluded that the model may have underestimated the problem. 223 00:14:03.940 --> 00:14:08.520 The upper limit, they now suggest, should range between seven and ten degrees. 224 00:14:09.460 --> 00:14:15.200 Neither model takes into account the possibility of a partial melting of the methane hydrate 225 00:14:15.200 --> 00:14:19.180 still present in vast quantities around the fringes of the polar seas. 226 00:14:21.400 --> 00:14:26.780 Suddenly, the events of a quarter of a billion years ago begin to look very topical indeed. 227 00:14:27.560 --> 00:14:31.820 One of the possible endings of the human story has already been told. 228 00:14:32.620 --> 00:14:38.500 Our principal political effort must now be to ensure that it does not become a myth. 229 00:14:38.520 --> 00:14:39.400 The world is now set in stone. 230 00:14:40.600 --> 00:14:45.700 And this is where you come in, because one of the principal impediments worldwide 231 00:14:46.520 --> 00:14:52.480 to preventing any serious action on climate change is your government. 232 00:14:53.120 --> 00:15:00.920 The Howard government was one of the principal governments in preventing real action on Kyoto, 233 00:15:01.160 --> 00:15:06.960 the climate change protocol, in preventing that protocol from going far enough, 234 00:15:06.960 --> 00:15:13.140 in demanding indeed that nations should be able to produce more carbon dioxide 235 00:15:13.960 --> 00:15:15.080 rather than less carbon dioxide. 236 00:15:16.300 --> 00:15:21.040 And paradoxically, of course, this puts you as Australians in a very powerful position. 237 00:15:22.460 --> 00:15:26.160 Because if you can change the policy of your government, 238 00:15:26.940 --> 00:15:32.540 then that removes one of the major bricks in the wall which is obstructing progress 239 00:15:32.540 --> 00:15:35.840 on this most urgent and desperate of all global issues. 240 00:15:35.840 --> 00:15:43.200 We're talking about the possible elimination of humankind and most of the other life on Earth. 241 00:15:44.820 --> 00:15:50.460 So I feel that of all the things which could bring hope to the Earth, 242 00:15:50.600 --> 00:15:59.000 which Australians can do, it is to give Howard and his people such a hard time on this, 243 00:15:59.060 --> 00:16:05.640 to apply so much pressure that they are forced to become the government for stopping global warming, 244 00:16:05.640 --> 00:16:07.740 rather than the government for encouraging it. 245 00:16:08.960 --> 00:16:15.280 And so out of this great fear is a sort of answer to that question of what can we do? 246 00:16:16.120 --> 00:16:22.940 An answer to the question of what can those who live in this remote part of the world, 247 00:16:23.060 --> 00:16:29.720 distant from so many of the centres of power, actually do to change the course of human existence? 248 00:16:30.940 --> 00:16:32.840 Nothing is more urgent than this. 249 00:16:32.900 --> 00:16:35.620 And I urge you to get out there and to call on the government. 250 00:16:35.640 --> 00:16:40.560 And I urge you to cause as much trouble as possible until we see a reversal on this key element of government policy. 251 00:16:40.760 --> 00:16:41.120 Thank you. 252 00:16:47.980 --> 00:16:56.140 Thank you very much, Chair. 253 00:16:56.780 --> 00:17:04.320 I'm told that there are close to 30,000 people who have been part of this conference or this event. 254 00:17:05.640 --> 00:17:11.280 That is including the comprising primary of the participants of the last three days. 255 00:17:13.460 --> 00:17:17.160 And when we talk about why we should be hopeful, 256 00:17:17.800 --> 00:17:26.480 it seems to me that already we have about 30,000 people who have been part of sharing ideas, 257 00:17:26.580 --> 00:17:29.160 part of listening to each other. 258 00:17:29.400 --> 00:17:34.720 And what I see as possibly going to happen in the next 12 months or so, 259 00:17:34.720 --> 00:17:38.860 is that books will get written, papers will get rewritten, 260 00:17:38.980 --> 00:17:44.220 ideas that were received at this conference will be re-scrutinised, 261 00:17:44.300 --> 00:17:50.220 new ideas, old ideas, and that in itself gives us a reason to hope. 262 00:17:50.380 --> 00:17:57.220 That 30,000 people have been part of this event in itself, a story of hope. 263 00:17:58.900 --> 00:18:04.480 But in terms of my contribution this evening, I'm going to start first with a story of fear. 264 00:18:04.720 --> 00:18:05.580 A story of fear as well. 265 00:18:06.100 --> 00:18:07.380 A story out of Africa. 266 00:18:07.720 --> 00:18:11.800 A story that I heard about five days ago at another event. 267 00:18:12.200 --> 00:18:18.920 I was told by an 18-year-old girl who had been caught up with a war that was not of her making. 268 00:18:19.160 --> 00:18:21.560 And she had been only 15 at the time. 269 00:18:21.820 --> 00:18:25.760 And then I'll move to hopefully an example of hope in Africa. 270 00:18:26.660 --> 00:18:33.400 First of all, often when we think of Africa, we think of this one continent as if it's one country. 271 00:18:34.720 --> 00:18:36.680 Africa is far from that. 272 00:18:37.020 --> 00:18:41.100 Africa is made up of different countries, it's made up of different realities, 273 00:18:41.460 --> 00:18:45.980 and it's made up of really different realities of hopes and fears, even within that. 274 00:18:46.800 --> 00:18:49.080 The story of the fear I was talking about. 275 00:18:49.520 --> 00:18:57.540 This girl told a gathering almost like this one, only about five days ago in Brisbane, 276 00:18:57.760 --> 00:19:03.440 about how when she was 15, she was 18 at the time when she gave the story, 277 00:19:03.440 --> 00:19:09.580 that how when she was 15, living in the eastern part of the Congo in Africa, 278 00:19:09.780 --> 00:19:11.200 not very far from Botswana actually, 279 00:19:14.580 --> 00:19:22.360 people wielding guns broke into her house, grabbed her and her father and her brother and her cousin 280 00:19:22.360 --> 00:19:24.240 and took them into the bush. 281 00:19:24.820 --> 00:19:30.160 At one point threatened to kill the men and force them to go back, 282 00:19:30.400 --> 00:19:33.420 and they drugged her and made her join with the gang. 283 00:19:33.440 --> 00:19:36.840 She was then killed by another group of girls, so she was the eighth in this group, 284 00:19:37.000 --> 00:19:44.980 and for the next two and a half months, she was repeatedly raped by these armed wielding men. 285 00:19:45.640 --> 00:19:51.620 She told a very horrifying and horrific story about how she lived those two and a half months, 286 00:19:51.880 --> 00:19:56.820 and how these were people who were fighting wars in the Congo. 287 00:19:56.920 --> 00:20:01.800 There is civil unrest there, and they were the rebels. 288 00:20:02.520 --> 00:20:04.540 And they had to move from place to place. 289 00:20:04.880 --> 00:20:07.740 And she was only 15, she couldn't really walk very fast, 290 00:20:07.860 --> 00:20:09.420 and none of the girls could walk very fast, 291 00:20:09.480 --> 00:20:13.220 and often what they would do if they had to run, they would turn them to their belts, 292 00:20:13.800 --> 00:20:16.360 because that's the only way you can force these girls to run with you. 293 00:20:16.740 --> 00:20:19.180 And she was telling this story, and she was saying how, 294 00:20:19.920 --> 00:20:23.120 I'm lucky, she said, because I did not become pregnant. 295 00:20:23.200 --> 00:20:25.620 I'm lucky because I did not contract AIDS. 296 00:20:25.880 --> 00:20:29.360 And my other people, the other girls who were in this group, 297 00:20:29.540 --> 00:20:31.620 some of them died, some of them became pregnant. 298 00:20:31.800 --> 00:20:33.700 Some of them contracted AIDS. 299 00:20:34.040 --> 00:20:39.220 And there was obviously a hash in the room, you know, 300 00:20:39.240 --> 00:20:41.460 and you could feel the helplessness. 301 00:20:41.680 --> 00:20:45.520 It's okay, you've told us your story, but how do we move forward with that? 302 00:20:45.920 --> 00:20:48.160 How do we make any difference in your life? 303 00:20:48.480 --> 00:20:51.100 She went back, she's back in, I'm sure, in the Congo right now. 304 00:20:51.240 --> 00:20:53.960 She's domestic with us at 18, hardly can read and write. 305 00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.720 She told us her story, said it to us, and it made us feel helpless. 306 00:21:00.400 --> 00:21:01.780 But I think an event like this, 307 00:21:01.800 --> 00:21:05.520 it's about going beyond those stories and saying, you know, 308 00:21:05.540 --> 00:21:09.460 how can we make sure that it does not happen to another 15-year-old someplace else? 309 00:21:10.180 --> 00:21:16.760 And how, as a human race, are we part of making that happen 310 00:21:16.760 --> 00:21:19.460 and therefore part of making sure it does not happen? 311 00:21:21.120 --> 00:21:27.140 That, in a way, brings me a little bit to my story of hope for Africa. 312 00:21:27.840 --> 00:21:30.520 And I want to cite Botswana, you know, 313 00:21:30.540 --> 00:21:31.780 even with the price of the world, you know, 314 00:21:31.780 --> 00:21:33.880 the problems that I have told you about in the last few days, 315 00:21:33.920 --> 00:21:35.880 even with the problems that I write about in my books, 316 00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:38.840 how it is an example of hope for Africa. 317 00:21:39.920 --> 00:21:43.320 It's only 36 years old, it's a country, an independent country, 318 00:21:43.440 --> 00:21:45.660 and it didn't leave, at independence, from Britain. 319 00:21:45.940 --> 00:21:48.280 It had only 12 kilometers of tar road. 320 00:21:48.480 --> 00:21:49.620 That's only 36 years ago. 321 00:21:50.500 --> 00:21:52.420 I mean, it's younger than I am, obviously. 322 00:21:55.380 --> 00:21:55.780 So... 323 00:21:57.400 --> 00:21:58.200 Very obviously. 324 00:21:58.200 --> 00:22:00.840 And so... 325 00:22:03.280 --> 00:22:05.100 I think that's a major achievement. 326 00:22:05.440 --> 00:22:12.180 I mean, if you look at what this young government had to struggle with, 327 00:22:12.240 --> 00:22:15.800 at independence, with hardly any running water for anybody, 328 00:22:15.900 --> 00:22:19.260 with hardly any education to talk of, 329 00:22:19.380 --> 00:22:21.600 what I believe for... 330 00:22:22.200 --> 00:22:25.740 At independence in Botswana, 36 years ago, there were three lawyers, 331 00:22:26.520 --> 00:22:27.840 trained Botswana lawyers. 332 00:22:28.200 --> 00:22:28.820 And they were trained at independence. 333 00:22:28.960 --> 00:22:30.500 So, of course, one of them was going to be the Attorney General, 334 00:22:30.600 --> 00:22:31.560 one of them was going to be the judge, I guess, 335 00:22:31.640 --> 00:22:33.220 one of them was going to be the prosecutor. 336 00:22:33.360 --> 00:22:34.780 I don't know how they worked it out. 337 00:22:35.980 --> 00:22:38.760 But they had to import expatriate labor, actually, 338 00:22:38.780 --> 00:22:41.340 to make sure that there was a functioning judiciary. 339 00:22:42.860 --> 00:22:43.180 And... 340 00:22:46.220 --> 00:22:47.040 Today, you know, 341 00:22:47.780 --> 00:22:52.360 it has had regular elections since independence every five years. 342 00:22:53.140 --> 00:22:55.220 It is fairly politically stable. 343 00:22:55.780 --> 00:22:58.180 It boasts that it does not have one person in it, 344 00:22:58.200 --> 00:22:59.700 but it has been in jail for political beliefs. 345 00:23:01.260 --> 00:23:05.320 And that there's never been a political prisoner, you know, in the country. 346 00:23:05.540 --> 00:23:09.420 And it's a country that was brave enough, I believe, 347 00:23:09.480 --> 00:23:12.540 to appoint five and a half years ago a 30-year-old woman 348 00:23:13.200 --> 00:23:15.680 as its first, you know, woman judge. 349 00:23:16.120 --> 00:23:19.580 Especially the kind of history, the kind of work I did before that. 350 00:23:21.400 --> 00:23:25.620 So what I want to suggest is that it is not all hopeless in Africa. 351 00:23:26.140 --> 00:23:27.200 You know, that... 352 00:23:28.720 --> 00:23:30.900 And you may wonder why is Botswana different. 353 00:23:31.420 --> 00:23:33.540 And I'll tell you why I think Botswana is different. 354 00:23:33.740 --> 00:23:35.900 I think Botswana is different because it was poor at independence. 355 00:23:37.700 --> 00:23:41.800 It did not appear to be of any strategic importance to anybody, 356 00:23:42.720 --> 00:23:44.980 except for Cecil Rhodes when he wanted, you know, 357 00:23:44.980 --> 00:23:47.260 to build his railroad from Cape to Cairo. 358 00:23:47.940 --> 00:23:49.640 But he dealt with that really nicely. 359 00:23:49.640 --> 00:23:52.560 He just decided along the corridor of the railway, 360 00:23:52.600 --> 00:23:54.820 he's just going to have, you know, white-owned farms. 361 00:23:55.140 --> 00:23:56.020 So he had no problems. 362 00:23:57.520 --> 00:23:58.180 You know, but... 363 00:23:58.180 --> 00:23:59.460 So that was taken care of. 364 00:23:59.620 --> 00:24:03.060 And that although Botswana now depends on diamonds as his mainstay, 365 00:24:03.960 --> 00:24:06.800 those diamonds were discovered after independence. 366 00:24:07.940 --> 00:24:09.980 That was not the case in Mozambique. 367 00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:11.500 That was not the case in Namibia. 368 00:24:11.540 --> 00:24:13.660 That was not the case in South Africa or in Zimbabwe. 369 00:24:14.240 --> 00:24:18.740 Part of the problems of these countries is that they had something to offer 370 00:24:18.740 --> 00:24:19.340 to the West. 371 00:24:19.960 --> 00:24:23.280 And therefore, you know, the West was not willing to let them go. 372 00:24:23.580 --> 00:24:27.420 So the Cold War, you know, fights were fought in those areas 373 00:24:27.420 --> 00:24:28.540 of strategic importance. 374 00:24:28.800 --> 00:24:29.480 Botswana was forgotten. 375 00:24:29.600 --> 00:24:31.220 It was a piece of dust. 376 00:24:31.340 --> 00:24:35.380 And only later did it actually turn out to be of some worth. 377 00:24:35.700 --> 00:24:40.760 And I think also because of the type of engagement with the country 378 00:24:40.760 --> 00:24:43.980 that Britain had, it allowed, you know, 379 00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:48.420 traditional institutions to grow more or less unchecked. 380 00:24:48.960 --> 00:24:52.240 And therefore, the democracy that finally grew, 381 00:24:52.340 --> 00:24:55.020 really grew from the people, the values that they had. 382 00:24:55.180 --> 00:24:57.200 Of course, you know, transformed to a different type 383 00:24:57.420 --> 00:24:59.420 of a leadership system. 384 00:24:59.740 --> 00:25:05.320 But it still had the, I think, the base of what really means to be a Botswana. 385 00:25:07.000 --> 00:25:11.140 And then people would say, you know, then why do you write the kind of books 386 00:25:11.140 --> 00:25:16.400 that you write that suggest, you know, this dire situation? 387 00:25:16.860 --> 00:25:18.380 I don't think so. 388 00:25:18.460 --> 00:25:21.580 I mean, I, you know, believe that there is always a comment, 389 00:25:21.680 --> 00:25:23.740 political comment about any country, no matter how advanced, 390 00:25:23.860 --> 00:25:25.420 no matter how civilized, no matter how democratic, 391 00:25:26.320 --> 00:25:27.120 there's always something. 392 00:25:27.120 --> 00:25:30.320 You know, to, to correct this, there's always something to comment 393 00:25:30.320 --> 00:25:31.120 to make things better. 394 00:25:31.700 --> 00:25:36.000 And in fact, because of the kind of fiction I write, 395 00:25:36.060 --> 00:25:41.360 I've been asked a lot, even at home, sometimes I'm seen as a whistleblower. 396 00:25:41.720 --> 00:25:44.220 And people don't like that, whistleblowers are bad people 397 00:25:44.220 --> 00:25:45.380 as a general, you know, group. 398 00:25:45.740 --> 00:25:50.100 And suggesting that, you know, I'm inviting adverse comment 399 00:25:50.100 --> 00:25:53.860 about my country, you know, from outside that is bad, you know, 400 00:25:53.860 --> 00:25:56.140 about some nice things that happen in this country. 401 00:25:56.220 --> 00:25:57.100