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Collapse Issue 303 - 29 Oct 2012Issue 303 - 29 Oct 2012
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Anecdotes don't prove anything

Everybody knows someone who smoked all his life and lived to be 93 without a day's sickness, but that doesn't make smoking a statistically healthy lifestyle.

I'm glad that Peter Whiteman, Maureen Coakes and Keith Whitfield had such idyllically happy childhoods, but that doesn't prove anything about Australia in the 1950s.

If the 1950s were so great, how does it come about that we now live longer lives, have higher incomes, enjoy broader social services and are better educated than Australians in the 1950s?

We have become so socially aware that comments by Alan Jones that wouldn't have turned a hair in the 1950s now cause widespread outrage.

This is not to mention that serious crime rates are lower and still falling.

If Maureen Coakes is afraid of being abducted, the fear must be in her mind and not related to reality.

Let us also recall that, in the golden 1950s, homosexuality was a criminal offence, the xenophobic White Australia Policy was in full force, Aborigines were denied the vote, divorce was only possible through a degrading court process that labelled somebody "the guilty party", and children routinely died of illnesses that we cannot nowadays conceive as being fatal.

As for the position of women, Maureen Coakes wouldn't have been allowed to have a bank account without her husband's endorsement, could not have held a passport without his consent and would have had no right to family property in the event of his death.

Furthermore, if she attempted to separate from him, he could have her ordered to return and claim "restitution of conjugal rights", which today would be considered rape.

As it happens, Australia today can lay plausible claim to being the best country in the world.

Our economic, social and environmental conditions are the envy of everyone, and we are usually only edged out of the top spot by Norway and Switzerland, because nobody counts their lousy climates against them.

However, if anybody thinks that Australia was the best country in the world in the 1950s, he must be high on something.

As I recall it, in those days, everything in Australia was "the best in the southern hemisphere", and I think that just about sums it up: we had it all over the penguins in Antarctica.



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