Greg Melleuish, the royal Chairman Rudd, and academics acting above their pay grade ...

(Above: the royal Chairman Rudd).

Loon pond's favorite academic George Melleuish is at it again, this time with the notably incoherent column Acting above his pay grade.

Oops, I see that it isn't George Melleuish, as sub-edited to the highest possible standard by The Australian's fact checker at the start of the column, so much as Greg Melleuish, as noted in the credit at the bottom of the column.

Never mind. Let's just start with this post-modernist piece of relativist clap trap:

The nation is a nebulous concept. It is not an individual nor is it a corporate entity that can act as if it were an individual. It does not describe anything specific.

The problem here is that individuals and corporations are responsible for their actions. It is appropriate for an individual or a corporation to apologise when they have wronged someone. If an organisation, such as a charitable institution, allowed children under its care to be abused then it has an obligation to apologise to those it abused.

A nation, unlike an individual or a government organisation, has no real institutional existence. It cannot be held responsible for actions because it does not act.

No real institutional existence? By golly just who are those institutions that make up the United Nations then? It does not act? Well tell that to the next poor peasant when some nation makes declared or undeclared war on their nation.

Yep, bang goes centuries of considered thought developing such notions as the way nations might declare and act in war (Declaration of war) or the theory of nations (you can wiki it here as a starting point, perhaps not a bad idea for students of history in Wollongong).

Of course Greg Melleuish isn't trying to make sense or argue coherently, so much as find grounds for lambasting Chairman Rudd.

For a prime minister to apologise on behalf of "the nation" is a fairly meaningless gesture because the nation is not the individual or institution responsible for the harm done. Such an apology is just a form of rhetorical flourish.

Unless of course the individual was employed at a government institution, or the institution responsible for the harm done was funded and run by government instrumentalities. Sure ping the individuals, but the ultimate buck has to stop somewhere, and said acknowledging of such issues doesn't let said individuals off the hook, with the 'just following orders' riff receiving a set back at Nuremberg.

Back in the old days the nations (who chose to act in a world war) decided that Germany should, as a result of all the loss and damage suffered by the Allies, fork over a huge amount of money as reparations (wiki it here). The good news is the Germans will finish paying off the Americans in 2010.

Why the damned allies even made the Germans accept total responsibility for causing the war, and rapped them over the knuckles with sundry War Guilt clauses. (here). You'd have thought the notion of guilt, apologies and reparations, which have been doing the rounds for centuries, might be of more than passing interest to an academic with an interest in history.

Sure it was such a brutal treaty that it led directly on to the second world war, but somehow I don't think that Chairman Rudd's apology to maltreated kids in institutions will produce the same dire results.

Whatever. You have to wonder why Melleuish blathers on about the apology and what impact it might have. A few tears were shed, demands for reparation denied, and meantime Melleuish worries about vague entities in an astonishing way. That's right, the next time you think you're living in Australia, you're not. You're living in a vague entity:

It is a sad fact that we live in a world in which individual moral responsibility is increasingly devalued. We should insist real agents, such as individuals, be held responsible for evil acts, not social forces and vague entities such as the nation.

But ever the striving mumbo jumbo post modernist, Melleuish isn't content to stop there, living in his own shadow land of vague entities, as if Chairman Rudd has suddenly decided individual responsibility is no longer viable, not when collective guilt will do:

This leads to the second issue. Is it appropriate that a prime minister speak on behalf of the nation in such matters?

It should be noted that a prime minister has no official standing according to the Australian Constitution. His leadership rests on the fact that he heads the party that commands a majority in the House of Representatives.

Oh dear. Chairman Rudd, like all the PMs before him, is clearly a vague entity. No status, no official standing, a non-person.

The prime minister is a political leader. He is not directly elected. His party will have received less than fifty per cent of the first preference votes at the most recent election. It is difficult to see why such a political figure is entitled to speak on behalf of the nation considered not as a political institution but as a moral entity.

Well it's difficult to see how he can keep and send troops to fight in Afghanistan if that's the case but somehow he manages it, but let's see how Melleuish works his magic trick, by pretending that the vague entity of nationhood means politicians should strictly stick to politics.

We have a person who is eminently able to perform such a role and that person is the governor general. This position is above politics and one of a governor general's roles relates to those matters that are meant to unify the Australian people.

The position is above politics? Tell that to the few who can still remember the dismissal. The notion that a stuffed straw person GG can trot out banalities and pieties in relation to various moral issues is the kind of nonsense only a David Flint could propose. And now it seems Greg Melleuish. Of course the last thing a conservative wants is a GG trotting out a moral position on gay marriage, even if according to polls the majority of Australians, that vague community in a vague entity, might be in favor of the concept. There's morality and then there's the end of the world as we know it.

There is a real problem here. Rudd, like his predecessor, has increasingly sought to appropriate to himself those activities that go beyond politics and may be said to concern the Australian people as a nation. He constantly comments on matters that are not political in nature.

WTF? Matters that are not political in nature? The people as a nation? What the heck, the PM is just a ceremonial position, and he should do nothing except politics?

Lordy, lordy, does Melleuish have any idea of the depth and scope of involvement of government in the lives of Australians? Does Melleuish have any grasp of what constitutes non-political matters? Politicians talk all the time about non-political matters, which is to say things like climate change, abortions, gay marriage, the right to drive, the right to drink, manners and deportment.

You don't have to be a post modernist relativist cheese eating academic of the Melleuish school to recognize that the French position that 'tout est politique' is a tad extreme, but not so sublimely silly as Melleuish's attempt to restrict politicians to politics.

The consequence is to bring politics into matters that should not be political in nature. Rudd is a political leader. He is not head of state nor is he in a position to act as if he is head of state.

Unfortunately Rudd is behaving like some sort of monarch. In days gone by royals claimed to be able to cure skin complaints by touching the person concerned. Rudd seems to believe he can cure the psychic ills of the nation through a wave of the hand and a bit of waffly rhetoric.

Well actually I don't think Chairman Rudd thinks that at all, at least not in this particular case. The apology was proposed and vigorously lobbied for by those affected, and by those acting on their behalf. Not earth shattering, but apparently moving if you were a victim, and on we go. Somehow Melleuish manages to ferret through the entrails and find harm to the body politic:

This sort of behaviour is not good for the health of our body politic. Our system of government has traditionally divided ceremonial and symbolic activities from political ones. The ceremonial activities, those that are non-political and unite us, are carried out by the governor general and the various state governors. The political activities belong to the politicians.

Well I'm sorry to say that if this was a remark led in an essay in any course in Australian history conducted by me, I'd have to give it an F. Perhaps the student might start reconsidering his paper by looking at the opening of the Sydney Harbor bridge, where Jack Lang was beaten to the tape by sword-wielding New Guarder, Francis De Groot.

Unless of course he wants to argue that the ceremonial opening of a bridge is a political activity best left to politicians intent on political business. Then he can explain how almost any MP will turn up to a garden party, the opening of a chook shed, or the judging of a CWA jam show if they thought there was a vote in it. And how this political activity should be stopped, since it musses up the natural order of the world, which consists of dividing things into "politics" and "other". And never the twain shall meet.

The idea that there's such a thing as 'politics' separate from everything else in a community - dare we even use that vague entity term a nation - is such a staggering over-simplification that the mind boggles with the host of contrary examples that might be harvested from the history of that vague entity Australia. But that doesn't stop Melleuish from trying:

This system has served us well. It has helped to keep the infinite egotism of political leaders in check. However, recent times have seen political leaders attempting to become more than just political leaders. Now we have Rudd seeking to be the Father of the Nation. It is important that politicians like Rudd be confined to what they are good at, politics.

Well I suppose Melleuish is right about that - the real father of the nation might well have been another prime minister, Edmund Barton, whom we can clearly blame for siring such a vague entity with such a wretchedly vague constitution (here).

Naturally the comments to the Melleuish piece featured the logical comeback - something along the lines of professors needing to stick to what they're good at, lecturing students, not grandstanding to the public with their tripe.

Cruel, but fair. After all, tout est politique.

(Below: Chairman Rudd acting in a vice-regal way. Note the positioning of the fingers on the cup. And below that, the Chairman acting in a regal way with the King and Queen of Spain. But what are those musicians doing there? Didn't they realize that these kinds of events must be confined to royalty? Remember to grok the royal striped ties).