Tim Richardson

Tim Richardson finally agreed to an interview, after months of dogged pursuit. The Mansfield Journal, a leading intellectual publication catering to Australia's elite, is proud to present this timely and seminal conversation with a favourite son. It is virtually unedited. Considering the importance of the subject matter and the rareness of this opportunity, we have decided to publish the interview almost in entirety.

TR: (Laughs). Well, I'm not necessarily well known for consistency [note: see Rules]. I grew up in a small town of 2000 people, which in Australian terms is far from insignificant. Mansfield was important enough to feature on most maps of the state, and was for a century the administrative centre of a large shire. This is "believe it or not material", you know. For its inhabitants, Mansfield was home, school, shopping centre, pivot of their cultural and religious lives…. For the folk of the shire looked to this little place, at the end of a minor highway and a torn-up train line, as the centre of their world. It was a self contained community, a little eco-bubble.

But at the end of the day, we have 2000 people, loggers, retired farmers, butchers, pump salesmen and agricultural equipment dealers, and an hour's drive to anywhere else. Mansfield had its "Golden Mile": the places where a TV antenna could get city channels. I don't know what the critical mass is before a community spawns counter cultures, but I can empirically state that it is a lot more than 2000… Rural communities are conservative and isolated. Oh sure, we had lots of room to breathe: I remember the flock of bantam chooks, my sister's horse keeping the grass down around the tennis court we never used, Jackson the pet sheep in the side paddock (later to become lamb chops after getting a bit too big and strong). How many kids can host a full size cricket pitch on their front yard? Lofted cover drives were always a worry, because if they made it through the small orchard between mid-off and my father's church, next stop was most likely to be a stained glass window in eternal memory of some ancient

But nothing changes the way I remember groping for some intellectual growth, and nothing will ever erase the persecution, sometimes physical and often mental, I suffered for being bright.

MJ: You've said that you would never raise children in a small rural environment …

TR: Not if they are bright. No. Let's move on, can we; I don't want to dwell on this. I'm sounding more sentimental these days.

MJ: OK, then. You've talked about sport before, it's central to small Australian towns -

TR: Not just the small towns!

MJ - ok, but even in Melbourne life doesn't revolve around the weekend football to the extent of your Mansfields. Perhaps I could ask you sporting highlights?

TR: I have no great achievements on the sporting field. Well, I am proud that for six consecutive years I avoided participating as a competitor in the compulsory-participation school swimming sports, although I used to enjoy tallying the score and disseminating the relative positions of the competing houses. I was nominally in Howqua house, I think. I didn't see much point in participating in something I couldn't be competitive in, thank goodness I've grown up in that regard. Incidentally, we were told Howqua was a local Aboriginal leader, but I have my doubts about that now [I have since been informed that Howqua may be derived from the name of a European settler]. There was one time I was goal umpiring in an inter-school football match and I over-rode the field umpire to take a goal away from my school: that was a highlight in terms of integrity. Didn't make some of our team happy, but fellow students came up afterwards and said they wanted to umpire in future too, having gained some respect for the position. I liked that. Badminton was my 'major' sport - it was very popular in Mansfield when I was growing up, due to the charismatic leadership of a local bank manager. I was treasurer of the junior badminton association for a year or so, and I was scorekeeper for the junior basketball competition as well, so I contributed. For the basketball I wrote programs on my Sinclair ZX81, mighty precursor to the information age with its 1K on-board RAM, to track the ladder and the leading point scorers; my math teacher thought I was a genius and wanted me to submit these programs to some magazine! I upgraded to a Spectrum, for the record. This teacher, Mr Little, well, I am going to digress because this story just has to be told. In primary school, my teachers gave my material ahead of the year to keep me interested. In my first two years of high school, same thing. So when I had Mr Little, in Year 9 [third year] I expected the same thing. But no, Mr Little didn't agree - he was, I think, quite happy with the equal outcome nonsense destroying Victorian state schools at the time. Something from which they have yet to recover. So Mr Little said to me, "If I give you Year 10 material this year, what will you do in Year 10?" Year 11, I said. "And what will you do in year 11?" Year 12, I said. "A ha!" he said, for I had fallen for his cunning trap. "What will you do in Year 12 then?!" [final year - Ed]. I just looked at him, with a blank look that I have perfected now. One day, in morning recess, he felt guilty and taught me how to derive the formula for the volume of a sphere from first principles, which was kind of him, because I wasn't officially scheduled to learn integral calculus for a few more decades. But back to badminton, yeah? My badminton team won the B-grade premiership once, that was nice. I never played in a higher grade. I remember that year, I was in Year 11 and we had finally got a television set. After the games, I jogged the 400 metres home, Tuesday nights, winter, and it would be freezing of course, which the frost already settled, and I would watch Blake's 7, a low budget British sci-fi serial. They all died in the last episode, very average effort. Cheap though, they used only one set for the whole 25 minutes.

[MJ]: Well I guess that wraps up sport -

[TR]. No, it doesn't. I want to talk about Collingwood football club and my grandmother.

[MJ]: Collingwood? Do we have to? And heaven help any readers from outside of Australia, what about globalisation-

[TR]: Ho ho. The main reason I used to go down to Melbourne, on the bus, aged 12 or 13, was to meet up with my grandmother and go to watch Collingwood at Victoria park. God help those who don't know what we're talking about, yeah? I guess you will edit all of this, but anyway. I mean, this was a big trip for me. I would get dropped off in the huge city, beep beep, people rushing past on the bitumen footpaths, and meet Grandma. On the second trip, she was late to pick me up, which caused a bit of consternation in yours truly, but all ended well. I would go with Grandma and her sister, Auntie Grace. They would smuggle me in, because they had two seasons tickets. I would wait while they both went through the turn-styles, and then Grandma would come back out with the two tickets, and we would brazenly walk in, with my first name being Grace. I am sure this was approved by the benign officials! Victoria part

was an old, primitive venue but the fearsome home of a proud and traditional football club (older than all but a handful of English soccer clubs, by the way).


			Aunty Grace was terrifying during the game, and most of all when our players were concerned.

Auntie Grace was terrifying during the game, and most of all when our players were concerned. One moment Ray Shaw or Ronny Wearmouth would be her darling, but heaven help them if they made a mistake. I was brought up Collingwood. My grandfather was an earlier member - he grew up in Collingwood, a working class inner-city zone that was a slum area in his time. He was related to a very famous player, Dick Lee. You can't explain this to someone who hasn't experienced it. The joy on Monday when your team won on the weekend, the shame when you had to face up at school after a defeat. I can't believe those kids who were loyal to St Kilda winter after winter when they were stuck at the bottom. Those kids were the heroes of VFL tribalism. Of course, Collingwood supporters had their own cross to bear: so many years since the last premiership, despite an amazing number of grand final appearances, only to lose time after time when victory seemed certain. They lost by one point to St Kilda (the only Grand Final the Saints have ever won), they lost the replay after the second Grand Final draw in the VFL's history … and all those losses to Carlton.

[MJ]: So where were you in 1990?

[TR] When the Pies finally won? I was sitting in the front room of 428 Lygon St with my housemate and best friend Steve and other loyal Collingwood fans, devouring the game. Steve and I had been to every Collingwood match in the finals series, including the draw against West Coast and the replay, but you can't get in to the GF² Grand Final unless you are a member, so we had to watch the big game on TV. But as soon as the siren went, we ran down to Victoria Park, which was only about 3kms away, and joined in the huge party. That was fun, even though I got a black eye when some psycho in the crowd went crazy and started throwing punches and chairs.

[MJ: 1990. A big year for you?]

[TR] Well, I was a Media Officer at Melbourne Uni, that year, which was a lot of fun. I was also a maths tutor for the Mathematics Department and warming up in my Arts degree, so I was everywhere on campus that year. It was the a tremendously exciting year, even more exciting than 1989, when I ditched Engineering and started Arts, and then decided on some whim to get involved in student politics, which lead a few months later to victory in the most sought after position, Media Officer. Or editor of Farrago, which is what it really was. And hence to the 12 month term, in 1990. Yes, that was fun. I learnt a lot. For instance, I decided not to pursue any thoughts of working in the media. I have never again been involved in organised politics either. Student politics is aggressive, and the more it lacks any potential, actual or unrealised, to contribute to the interests of its electorate, the more ideological and ego laden it becomes. It is a holy war. Afghanistan? Ha, I've been close to the Melbourne University Labor Club and survived with my soul still in terrestrial ownership. There was certainly no liberal democratic tradition restraining behaviour (and not just of the Labor Club). It is one thing to say politics is the art of the possible, but another thing to mean anything that is unconstrained by force or legal recourse -- shameless stacks, blatant abuse of meeting procedure, or even holding meetings in secret. Our paper was boycotted by one side of politics, and manipulated by another. We still won the Australian Student Newspaper of the Year award. I also learnt a lot about commitment to a vision, but only afterwards.

[MJ: So politically, where did it leave you?]

For me now, I am interested in the type of politics which is a surface representation of an underlying philosophy, a coherent personal ideology. I think this is amateur politics, or academic politics. Most professional politics is a compromise between the short term compromises as focuses as politicians respond to their own interests and lobby groups, and the pressures of a changing world (globalisation at the moment, for example). Which sounds like Chomskian grammar, yeah, funny and maybe ironic that I move further and further away from him politically. He is a genius and I'm a fool to even hint at some kind of comparison.

Politics for improving the day to day life of the electorate is less interesting to me with every passing day. Good government doesn't have much to with political theory, it has much more to do with good government. Chess teachers advise that a bad plan followed well is much better than nothing at all, and I think there is something in that for all of us (thanks Guru Bob).

[MJ: Apple pie.]
[TR] Since you asked. Of course, I believe that political and economic theory has practical consequences, but these consequences are shaped by long term forces that governments can’t do much about. If governments think they run the ship of state, they would be best advised to regard their engine as broken, and concentrate on guiding the vessel as the tide and currents take it here and there. Which sounds like I'm advocating for small government, or even virtual government, which I do, and yes, I guess this is very much a contextual observation, based on here and now. I don't care that this is not a universal truth. But so what? Isn't what I've said really just globalisation? I guess so, but it is here, and it is now, and I don't think there is anything to be done about it. Besides, globalisation may lead to more wealth, health and happiness that anything else we ever done since the spread of fire technology.

I'm a liberal. Sounds old fashioned, I don't know much about political theory. I believe that most people pursue lifestyle choices that are well accommodated in a market economy, and I believe that support for a market oriented democracy is most likely to allow me to live much as I want, while allowing others that choice too. It is a lifestyle and structure that people living under other systems aspire too.

Note: this interview was written by me for my amusement; it is satire. No such journal exists, of course. The idea of "The Mansfield Journal, a prestigious Australian journal of issues and people shaping the rural framework" still makes me chuckle.


			For the folk of the shire looked to this little place, at the end of a minor highway and a torn-up train line, as the centre of their world!

Extract of interview published with kind permission of The Mansfield Journal, a prestigious Australian journal of issues and people shaping the rural framework.