How two cousins helped shape their communities and Australia’s dairy industry

From the football paddock to the boardroom – How two cousins helped shape their communities and Australia’s dairy industry

I’ve been researching the history of the South Coast dairy cooperatives, and the stories emerging are extraordinary. These factories developed innovations, produced nationally recognised dairy products, nurtured talented people and played an influential role in their communities. This is the story of two cousins, Geoff Boxsell and Russell Fredericks, whose achievements in sport, business and community leadership show what can happen when people recognise one another’s abilities and give them opportunities to develop. Their story has given me enormous hope about what we can achieve in our communities today.

This is a chapter from The dairy cooperatives that built our communities.

Growing up beside the dairy factory

In a paddock beside the Jamberoo dairy factory, a group of boys spent their childhood playing football, kicking towards makeshift goalposts attached to a telegraph pole. Among them were cousins Geoff Boxsell and Russell Fredericks, born exactly one year apart, on 4 July 1939 and 4 July 1940.

Geoff’s father Wallace (Wally) managed the Jamberoo Co-operative Dairy Society, while Russell grew up on the nearby Fredericks family dairy farm, Burnside. Their families lived within a short distance of one another, and the factory was part of their everyday lives. The boys played alongside Geoff’s brother Bruce and Russell’s brothers, including Lance, Alan and Neville.

Geoff recalls that every one of those boys eventually played first-grade football. He and Russell would go on to have distinguished sporting careers, manage dairy factories while still remarkably young and help shape the future of Australia’s dairy industry.

They grew up in communities where farming, sport, business and voluntary organisations were closely connected. People knew one another’s families, understood the demands of farming and frequently worked together in several different capacities.

Russell learned to drive the family’s Farmall tractor when he was eight or nine. Like other children growing up on dairy farms, he understood that cows needed milking twice a day, machinery needed maintaining and everyone had responsibilities. Geoff learned to milk cows on his grandfather’s farm and spent much of his childhood around the dairy factory his father managed.

Both boys attended Jamberoo Public School before boarding at Hurlstone Agricultural High School. Russell excelled academically, particularly in mathematics, and represented Combined High Schools in rugby union. Geoff continued to Hawkesbury Agricultural College, graduating in 1958 with a Diploma in Dairy Technology. He was dux and best practical student and earned sporting Blues in athletics and cricket.

Russell had the academic ability to pursue further study, although family circumstances influenced his immediate future. His father Milton was living with multiple sclerosis, and Russell understood the importance of remaining close enough to Jamberoo to help his parents and the family farm when necessary.

He had considered employment with Elders in the Northern Territory, although the prospect of moving so far from home was difficult for his parents. Instead, he accepted a position with Kiama Supply Company, beginning work in December 1957, aged seventeen.

That decision would eventually lead him into dairy factory management, although the opportunity arrived in a rather unexpected way.

Wally Boxsell recognises Russell’s potential

Russell worked as an accounts clerk at Kiama Supply Company, which operated a grocery ordering and delivery service. Customers placed their orders, staff assembled and delivered the groceries, and accounts were settled periodically.

When the business changed to a self-service model, with customers paying at the counter, the ordering and delivery operation was closed. Seven employees were retrenched, including Russell, who returned to helping on the family farm while considering his next move.

At seventeen, Russell had embarked on a promising career in accounting. The career had other ideas.

Then his uncle Wally Boxsell, manager of the Jamberoo dairy factory, approached him with a proposition. Would Russell like to try working at the factory?

Russell accepted, and his first job involved unloading milk cans from trucks. The cans weighed approximately 60 kilograms when full and had to be lifted onto the receiving platform, tested for quality and moved along the conveyor system to be emptied into milk vats. At the height of the season, Jamberoo could receive as many as 1,000 cans from nearly 100 farms over the morning and afternoon deliveries.

It was a very physical introduction to management training.

Russell also washed equipment, cleaned floors and worked in the produce store. Wally then gave him opportunities to learn the other sections of the factory, including the laboratory, where he tested milk and cream, and the milk room, where he operated cooling equipment. He learned milk grading, worked alongside chief butter maker Steve Dare and eventually gained his milk grading qualifications and Butter Maker’s Certificate.

By the time Russell left Jamberoo, he understood milk receival, laboratory testing, butter manufacturing, refrigeration and factory operations. He also understood how the work performed in one section affected everything that followed.

One day, while Russell was working in the laboratory, Wally mentioned that Gerringong Co-operative Dairy Society was looking for a manager and encouraged him to apply.

Wally helped prepare Russell for the interview, taking him through the operation of the boiler, refrigeration plant and other equipment, and explaining the administrative responsibilities associated with running a dairy factory.

Russell faced a demanding interview with Gerringong’s board of directors and was offered the position in 1965, when he was twenty-four, turning twenty-five that July.

The young man who had lost his job as an accounts clerk was now responsible for managing a dairy cooperative.

Wally Boxsell recognised Russell’s potential, brought him into the factory and gave him opportunities to learn the business from the ground up. A few years later, Russell was managing a cooperative of his own.

Five grand finals and five premierships

Russell’s sporting career was developing alongside his work. In 1958, aged seventeen, he was selected for Jamberoo’s first-grade rugby league team, playing alongside men who spent their working weeks milking cows and performing physically demanding jobs on dairy farms.

Jamberoo defeated Berry 18–8 to win the premiership that year, and Russell collected his second premiership with Jamberoo in 1961 when the team defeated Nowra 7–2.

He later played for Dapto, winning the Illawarra first-grade premiership against Collegians in 1966. By then he was managing Gerringong dairy factory, and late in 1967 Gerringong Rugby League Football Club invited him to become its first-grade player-coach.

Russell had never coached a football team, but he knew what it took to be part of a premiership winning team and he took on the challenge.

Triumph for the crocks

Gerringong finished the 1968 regular season as minor premiers. The side included outstanding players such as Roy Stewart and the Brown brothers, Terry and Ken. Russell regarded Stewart as one of the finest footballers he had played alongside, admiring his speed, judgement and ability to create opportunities.

The difficulty was the size of the playing squad. Gerringong had only seventeen players available, leaving almost no capacity to accommodate injuries in a physically demanding sport. As the season progressed, the injuries accumulated, and Russell had to make increasingly difficult decisions about who could take the field.

Shellharbour defeated Gerringong 15–0 in the major semi-final, leaving the team needing to beat Albion Park in the preliminary final for another opportunity to play for the premiership. Gerringong won that match 11–9 and faced Shellharbour again on 21 September 1968.

This time Gerringong won 15–9.

Three days later, The Kiama Independent celebrated the victory with a headline that captured the condition of the winning side. TRIUMPH FOR THE CROCKS

The newspaper suggested Gerringong Football Club could now hold a bargain sale of bandages, strappings and harnesses. Its report praised Russell’s tackling, tactical kicking, ability to direct play and leadership under pressure. An accompanying photograph showed him receiving the premiership cup from Group Six president Harvey Middleton.

Russell had now played in four premiership-winning first-grade teams, twice with Jamberoo, once with Dapto and once with Gerringong.

The factory needed his attention throughout the week, from staff and production to finances and the farmers who supplied the milk. On weekends, Russell had seventeen footballers to manage, and an injury list that kept growing.

Russell was managing a dairy cooperative and coaching a first-grade football team with only seventeen players. Both responsibilities demanded judgement, trust and an ability to bring out the best in people.

By 1970, Russell was managing the Gerringong dairy factory, playing first-grade rugby league, studying accounting and, with his wife Coral, raising two young children. One wonders when he found time to sleep.

I have some questions for Russell when we next speak. How did he manage the injuries? How did he restore the players’ confidence after the 15–0 defeat? How did he persuade men who were tired, injured and working physically demanding jobs to give everything they had?

And did he apply anything he learned coaching Gerringong to managing people in the dairy industry?

Recognising young talent

Russell continued coaching Gerringong in 1969, although several experienced players retired and he had to develop a younger team. Among the emerging footballers was Michael Cronin, who would become one of Australia’s most celebrated rugby league players.

Russell recognised Cronin’s goal-kicking ability and gradually gave him greater responsibility. Gerringong missed the finals that year, although the younger players were gaining experience that would prove important the following season.

Russell had also enrolled in management accounting at Wollongong Technical College, attending classes two or three evenings each week while managing the dairy cooperative. In 1970, he decided to relinquish the coaching position so he could concentrate on his studies.

Ron Hopper took over as coach, and Russell continued playing. Gerringong reached the grand final against Shellharbour, trailing 13–2 during the second half before staging an extraordinary recovery. Russell scored a late try that helped bring the scores level, and Michael Cronin’s kicking eventually secured a 17–15 victory in extra time.

It was Russell’s fifth first-grade grand final, and he had won all five. Two with Jamberoo, one with Dapto and two with Gerringong.

Russell completed his management accounting studies with honours and later took up a role managing a poultry farm in South Australia.

Geoff’s sporting achievements

Geoff Boxsell was also an accomplished rugby footballer, playing rugby league for Jamberoo before becoming a foundation member of Kiama Rugby Union Club in 1961. He represented Illawarra at Country Week for four years and was named Illawarra Rugby Player of the Year in 1963.

He played alongside Russell’s younger brother Neville Fredericks, whom Geoff remembers as an outstanding breakaway.

One of Geoff’s favourite rugby memories concerns a penalty kick in 1966, when his captain, Peter Fyfe, asked whether he wanted to kick for goal. Geoff thought he was about forty metres from the posts, so he accepted and sent the ball between the uprights.

Only when he turned around did he realise he had kicked from the halfway line. Neville later confirmed how far the ball had travelled.

Geoff’s rugby career ended in 1967 when he broke his arm, although by then cricket had become an increasingly important part of his life.

He had scored 201 runs in a representative match for Southern New South Wales against Northern New South Wales, attracting attention from people involved in Sydney grade cricket. He joined Waverley and went straight into first grade, spending the next eleven years opening the batting for the Sydney club.

Geoff finished with the highest aggregate runs in the Sydney competition in both 1970 and 1971 and spent two years in the New South Wales state squad.

When Waverley celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2020, Geoff was included among fifty players considered for the club’s historical best team. The left-handed opening batsman’s position eventually went to David Warner.

The manager who drove to Sydney every Saturday

In 1970, Wally Boxsell retired, and Geoff became manager of the Jamberoo Co-operative Dairy Society, aged thirty. He was responsible for a substantial local business serving scores of dairy farmers, employing factory workers and manufacturing products sold well beyond the district.

Throughout the cricket season, he continued travelling from Jamberoo to Sydney to open the batting for Waverley.

Geoff was also studying. Although he held a Diploma in Dairy Technology, he wanted a stronger understanding of accounting and management, so he undertook accounting and cost accounting studies at technical college before continuing with commerce accounting at the University of Wollongong.

On Friday evenings, Geoff attended classes in Wollongong. His wife Viv would bring their young children to meet him afterwards, and the family would continue to Sydney for the weekend for Saturday cricket matches.

By the mid-1970s, Geoff was reconsidering the time he was spending travelling to Sydney. Tony Greig had arrived at Waverley around the time Geoff left, reportedly receiving $25,000 while the established players received nothing.

One Saturday in 1975, while driving north towards Sydney for preseason cricket practice, Geoff passed the University of Wollongong and noticed the cricket nets were up. He stopped to investigate.

He was already studying at the university. Why was he travelling all the way to Sydney every weekend when he could play cricket at Wollongong?

He never returned to Waverley. It had taken him eleven years of Sydney grade cricket to discover the advantages of playing closer to home.

Geoff joined Wollongong University Cricket Club and continued playing until 1999, when he was fifty-nine. He received a cricket Blue and life membership and represented Australian Universities on a tour of New Zealand in 1976. In 1980, he graduated from the University of Wollongong with his commerce accounting qualification.

A factory where knowledge was shared

Everyone had something to learn and something to teach

Geoff and Russell had both learned the dairy business from the factory floor, an experience that influenced their understanding of how the different parts of a manufacturing operation worked together.

Russell had started by unloading milk cans and progressed through the laboratory, milk room, butter room and other sections of the Jamberoo factory. When Geoff became manager, he continued encouraging employees to learn different jobs so they could cover absences, assist colleagues and understand how their own responsibilities affected other parts of the operation.

Milk receival, laboratory testing, refrigeration, manufacturing and packaging all depended on one another. A problem in one section could quickly affect production elsewhere, and an employee who understood several parts of the factory was better equipped to recognise difficulties and help solve them.

Geoff also enjoyed working alongside his employees. When a truck needed unloading or returned milk cans needed washing, he was prepared to put white overalls over his office clothes and help.

His directors occasionally reminded him that managing the factory was his job. Geoff maintained that knowing the operation included being prepared to wash the milk cans.

Employees were encouraged to acquire skills beyond their immediate jobs, giving the factory greater flexibility when someone was absent and allowing people to develop a broader understanding of the business.

At Jamberoo, employees were encouraged to learn every part of the operation. The factory gained a workforce capable of helping wherever needed, and its people gained skills they could carry into new responsibilities.

Learning another job meant someone could step in when a colleague was absent. It also gave employees a better understanding of the people, machinery and decisions on which their own work depended.

Quality, quality, quality

The Jamberoo dairy factory developed an exceptional reputation for making butter, achieving the Department of Agriculture’s highest butter grade for fifteen consecutive years. In 1976, Jamberoo butter was named Supreme Champion Dairy Product of Australia.

Geoff worked closely with laboratory specialist Kevin Richardson on product development, including an early form of spreadable butter. They blended cultured butter with vegetable oils to create a product that families around the world can spread straight from their fridge onto their toast at breakfast.

Making spreadable butter was one challenge. Selling it was another. The Pure Food Act prevented them from marketing it as butter, so they called it STUFF. The name left plenty of room for interpretation.

The experiments demonstrated the factory’s willingness to explore new products, challenge established practices and apply its technical knowledge to opportunities emerging in the marketplace.

At Nowra, Russell was overseeing similar achievements.

A 1983 newspaper article headed Top Awards to Dairy Co-Op reported Nowra’s most successful year in dairy product competitions. The cooperative had won awards at the Australian Dairy Institute’s national and state championships and the Sydney Royal Easter Show.

Its products included award-winning cream and yoghurt, with the factory also developing yoghurt without artificial additives or preservatives.

Russell attributed the success to four factors: the quality of milk supplied by farmers, the combined skills and experience of the workforce, rigorous manufacturing methods and strict quality control before products left the factory.

The newspaper identified employees including Geoff Jarrett, Keith Rosskelly and Peter Condon among those contributing to the achievements. Keith has his own chapter in this history, and his recollections will add another perspective to the people and practices behind the factory’s success.

Jamberoo and Nowra were producing nationally recognised dairy products through the combined efforts of farmers, laboratory staff, production workers, technical specialists and managers.

Both factories had developed reputations for manufacturing quality, and both managers recognised the contribution of the people responsible.

The trophy that belonged to everyone

When Jamberoo’s butter was named Supreme Champion Dairy Product of Australia in 1976, the prestigious Nightingale Trophy came back with Geoff Boxsell’s name engraved on it.

Almost fifty years later, Geoff still questions that decision.

Why was his name on the trophy when the achievement belonged to the cooperative? The farmers who supplied the milk, the laboratory staff, the butter makers and everyone else involved in producing that butter had contributed to its success. Geoff believed the trophy should have carried the cooperative’s name.

Russell expressed a similar view in 1983 when he attributed Nowra’s awards to the farmers who supplied quality milk and the employees whose knowledge and care produced the finished products.

Geoff still looks at that trophy and thinks about the people whose names were missing from the recognition.

Almost fifty years after receiving the Nightingale Trophy, Geoff still asks why his name was engraved on it. He believes the award belonged to everyone who helped produce the winning butter.

The cooperatives that shaped their communities

The dairy factories at Jamberoo, Gerringong and Nowra were major businesses in their communities. They employed local people, purchased milk from surrounding farms, supported transport operators, invested in machinery and generated business for local suppliers.

Owned by farmers and governed by boards elected from their membership, the cooperatives gave producers opportunities to participate in decisions affecting milk supply, manufacturing, investment and the future of their businesses.

The wider dairy industry also exercised considerable influence with government. Producer organisations, dairy committees and annual conferences brought farmers, cooperative representatives and industry leaders together to debate the issues affecting their livelihoods. Milk prices, quotas, marketing arrangements, transport, processing regulations and industry investment all required engagement with government, and dairy leaders had established relationships through which they could advocate for producers.

These organisations also gave people experience in governance, finance, negotiation and collective decision-making, often while they continued running their own farms or businesses.

Their products were part of everyday Australian life. Milk, butter, cream and other dairy foods produced in these regional factories travelled far beyond the farms where they originated, finding their way onto breakfast tables, into school lunches, family meals, cafés and commercial kitchens. Thousands of families who had never heard of Jamberoo or Nowra consumed products made possible by the work of their farmers and factory employees.

The cooperatives helped shape the social and cultural life of their districts. Farming families and factory employees were involved in sporting clubs, service organisations, schools, churches and community events. Relationships developed through dairying carried into these other activities, creating networks of people who knew one another, shared resources and worked together to get things done.

Their collective influence extended into government and industry policy. Through farmer organisations, cooperative boards and dairy industry conferences, people from small rural communities could participate in decisions affecting agricultural production, manufacturing, food supply and the economic future of their regions.

The cooperatives also provided opportunities that could change the course of someone’s life. Geoff Boxsell and Russell Fredericks grew up surrounded by people who shared their knowledge, recognised potential and encouraged others to take on new responsibilities. Both men carried that approach into their careers, giving others opportunities to develop skills and discover abilities they might never otherwise have had the chance to use.

Choosing the right people

By the early 1980s, the dairy industry was changing rapidly. Smaller factories faced ageing equipment, increasing costs and pressure to invest in more sophisticated manufacturing facilities.

Plans developed for a regional consolidation of dairy processing, although several potential partners withdrew, leaving Jamberoo and Nowra to proceed with the formation of the Shoalhaven Dairy Co-operative.

The merger meant Jamberoo’s factory would eventually close, a particularly significant decision for Geoff. It was the factory where he had grown up, where his father had been manager and where he had spent much of his working life.

When the merged cooperative needed a general manager, Geoff recommended Russell.

He believed Russell had the experience and abilities required to lead the new organisation, while Geoff would take the deputy role, contributing his technical knowledge and manufacturing experience.

The cousins who had played football together beside Factory Lane were now working together on the future of dairy processing across a much larger region.

Russell brought extensive experience in cooperative management, financial administration and organisational leadership. Geoff brought specialised knowledge of manufacturing, product development and factory operations.

The proposed new Shoalhaven factory at Bomaderry required major investment and technical expertise, so Geoff brought in Peter Delaney, a former Hawkesbury Agricultural College colleague whose experience he respected, to help oversee the project.

The new factory became a significant development in the region’s dairy industry, and in 1989 Shoalhaven, Hunter Valley and Dairy Farmers combined to form Australian Co-operative Foods.

Geoff subsequently held senior manufacturing and corporate positions, retiring in 2001 after forty-two years in the dairy industry. Russell’s career also extended into broader leadership responsibilities, including substantial service in community organisations and financial institutions.

Both had moved a long way from the village factories where their careers began.

The connections beyond dairying

The Fredericks family’s contribution extended beyond Russell’s career. His younger brother Neville became an accomplished rugby union player and later served two terms as Mayor of Kiama.

Another brother, Alan, spent more than twenty years as president of the Alpine Club of Kiama, an organisation with origins in relationships formed through the dairy industry’s recruitment of overseas-trained veterinarians.

The club brought together farmers, professionals and businesspeople who pooled resources to establish a ski lodge at Thredbo.

The connections between dairying, sport, volunteering and community leadership appear repeatedly throughout these families’ histories. People developed friendships and professional relationships through farming, carried them into sporting and community organisations, and used their knowledge and contacts to help new ventures succeed.

What made these communities successful?

Russell Fredericks won five first-grade rugby league premierships, including the remarkable 1968 victory as Gerringong’s captain-coach. Geoff Boxsell played first-grade cricket for Waverley for eleven years while managing a dairy factory and pursuing further education.

Both became influential figures in an industry undergoing major structural change, while continuing to contribute to the communities where they had built their lives.

Their sporting records and management careers are impressive. The more revealing stories are about the opportunities they created for other people.

Wally Boxsell recognised Russell’s potential and gave him opportunities to learn the dairy business from the factory floor upwards. Russell later recognised the abilities of young footballers and helped them develop.

Geoff encouraged employees to learn different jobs and was prepared to work alongside them. He recognised Russell’s suitability to lead the merged cooperative and Peter Delaney’s technical abilities during the construction of the Bomaderry factory.

Both men publicly acknowledged the farmers and employees responsible for their factories’ award-winning products.

The factories and football clubs gave people room to learn, make mistakes, take responsibility and surprise themselves. Their communities benefited from everything they learned along the way.

The dairy cooperatives provided a structure through which individual farmers could achieve things collectively that would have been difficult to accomplish independently. Their factories brought together people with different skills, from milk production and testing to engineering, manufacturing, finance and management.

Sporting clubs created other opportunities to develop skills, accept responsibility and work alongside people from different backgrounds. The relationships between these organisations helped strengthen the communities they served.

The dairy cooperatives brought together people with different knowledge and abilities. Their strength came from what those people could achieve together.

What could we learn from them today?

As organisations have become larger and more specialised, the work people do has often become more narrowly defined. Employees may develop considerable expertise in their own responsibilities while having limited opportunities to understand the work of colleagues elsewhere.

Knowledge can become siloed, confined to individual departments, organisations or professional groups. People may make decisions without fully understanding how those decisions affect others.

At Jamberoo, employees learned to work across the factory, gaining experience of the manufacturing process and the responsibilities of their colleagues. Russell benefited from that approach early in his career, developing an understanding of dairy manufacturing that later supported his work as a manager.

Both men went on to lead organisations in which product quality depended on people bringing different skills together. Their factories’ awards were evidence of what those teams achieved.

The dairy cooperatives also gave farmers opportunities to pool resources, develop relationships, exchange knowledge and influence decisions affecting their industry. The benefits reached beyond the individual businesses to the wider communities in which they operated.

Geoff and Russell began as boys playing football beside a dairy factory. Their careers took them far beyond that paddock, and throughout they kept making room for other people to learn, contribute and lead.

Geoff and Russell grew up in that environment. Throughout their careers, they recognised the abilities of others and understood the value of bringing those people and their abilities together.

What have we lost as our organisations have become more specialised, our knowledge more compartmentalised and our opportunities to learn from one another more limited? And how much more could we achieve if we rediscovered what these dairy communities understood about sharing knowledge, recognising strengths and giving people opportunities to contribute?

Turns Out You Can Teach a Boomer New Tricks

Stop, get curious, then comment. It’s advice I give often, and in 2016 I ignored it.

This week a comment exchange from 2016 resurfaced on my blog. A farmer had read my post on native vegetation laws and came away certain I’d called farmers backwards and careless. The post called farmers custodians and praised Landcare as the best practice model. It also argued that farmers, like everyone else, need rules. We wear seatbelts and license our dogs because humans are poor at regulating themselves, and farmers are human too. She read it as an attack on farmers.

Instead of getting curious about what she’d heard, I defended myself. I sent her links to my awards, asked if she’d read the Further Reading, and told her to step back and remove the emotion. She came back angrier. Reading it now, I can see what upset her.

Years of leadership training have taught me to pause and ask for advice before I hit reply. Today I’d ring Charlie Arnot from The Center for Food Integrity and ask him how to show her we’re on the same side. His research shows shared values count three to five times more than facts in building trust. So I listen and ask better questions. I start by being curious, and I might learn something. She taught me there’s more than one way to say what I mean. Ten years later, I’m writing this post because I listened.

Yale researcher Dan Kahan has studied how identity shapes the way people read. My family has farmed here since 1831, so I understand why a post about farming practice can feel like a post about your family. Farmers are like everyone else in this. We all read through our own lives, and I suspect that explains a lot of the conflict on Facebook.

That’s what makes her comment so valuable. A like is easy. A conversation requires someone to put their thoughts into words, risk being misunderstood and perhaps have their thinking challenged. She took that risk, and I learned from it. Social media makes it so easy to register agreement without ever exploring why we agree. I wonder whether we’re becoming more comfortable expressing opinions and less comfortable discussing them.

Plenty of you are working on this too. How to Express Your Opinions Respectfully is one of the most read posts on my blog, and I updated it this month with what I’ve learned since.

Yesterday I got the chance to use it. A Facebook friend messaged me about my post on the Coalition’s spending cuts and wanted to know why I was singling out boomers. These days I know how to reply. I told him I’m a boomer too, and that plenty of us are doing it tough. Then I explained what the post was about and finished with: I suspect we actually agree that governments need to think much more carefully about where public money goes.

He wrote back within the hour. Thanks for your answer and clarification.

Different people see the same words through different lives. Now I know to get curious about theirs before I reply.

 

Why do humans find silos so attractive when they’re so claustrophobic?

She told me there was a meeting about collaboration. Looks like everyone else missed the memo

How many times have we read an article like this? Agriculture needs to break down silos, work with other industries, listen to different perspectives and collaborate to solve problems. I’ve been hearing it for decades.

I have enormous respect for the person behind this work, and I hope their research helps bring about meaningful change. Systems thinking has been around for close to a century, and we have learnt a great deal about the value of collaboration. The challenge is putting that knowledge into practice.

Agriculture has plenty of company. Governments, universities, businesses, charities and community organisations have been having the same conversations for years. We hold conferences, commission research and develop strategies. Then everybody goes home to their own organisation, their own budget and their own priorities.

What is it about human beings that makes us so good at identifying what needs to change and so reluctant to change how we behave?

We have built systems that reward individual and organisational success. We encourage people to become experts, compete for funding, protect their intellectual property and demonstrate why their organisation deserves support. Then we ask them to share knowledge, resources and decision-making with the very people they have been competing against.

After years of working with farming organisations, attending meetings, participating in workshops and watching the same conversations go round and round, I decided to put my energy into working with young people. I wanted to give them the skills, confidence and opportunities to be the change they wanted to see in the world.

I’ve watched students surprise themselves with what they can achieve when they have a problem worth solving, the freedom to ask questions and the opportunity to work with people who see things differently.

Change starts in our schools, where young people learn to listen, question, collaborate and solve problems together, before they inherit the habits that make change so difficult for the rest of us.

Much of our education system still revolves around individual achievement, subject boundaries and getting the right answer. We send those young people into workplaces where their success increasingly depends on their ability to work with people from different backgrounds, disciplines and organisations.

The Australian Farm Institute and AgriFutures are investing in systems thinking. The real test will come after the research is published and the workshops are finished. Who changes the way they work? Who shares a budget? Who invites somebody with a completely different perspective to help define the problem? Who is prepared to hand over responsibility when somebody else has a better idea?

What would happen if funding bodies measured collaboration by what organisations actually achieved together, rather than how many partnerships they listed in their applications?

And what would change if curiosity, communication and collaboration were given the same attention in schools as academic achievement?

I’ve learnt a great deal about changing my own behaviour over the years, including how I communicate and how much explanation people need. Old habits are remarkably persistent.

I hope this research gives people the confidence and encouragement to start doing some of these things differently.

I’ve found one. In Cowra, a neighbourhood centre that started in 1984 with $500 and volunteers in a church rectory now turns over around $5 million a year. Family support, youth work, disability programs, home maintenance, food relief and a volunteer group making burial clothing for stillborn babies all share one roof, one set of accounts and one leadership team. Council donates back the rent. Supermarkets donate food every day. Every program spends more of its money on people. I’ve written it up as a case study here.

I’m now working with a small group of people to see whether we can do the same in Kiama. We have a long way to go. Cowra shows us where to start.

If you’ve got a success story, I’d love to hear it.

 

If you’ve got a success story, I’d love to hear it.

Dairy farmers knew deregulation was coming. Were they prepared for it?

I suspect our cows had a few opinions about the whole business too. Lots to think about on the hill at Clover Hill

I’ve spent the past few months researching the history of dairy co-operatives, particularly the Jamberoo Dairy Factory and the organisations that eventually became Australian Co-operative Foods.

Jan Todd’s Milk for the Metropolis, published in 1994, has been a fascinating resource. Towards the end of the book, Todd describes how Australian Co-operative Foods (ACF) was preparing for an increasingly competitive market. By 1993, its directors were examining the financial and organisational changes required to operate in a deregulated environment.

Reading about those preparations more than thirty years later has brought back memories of what happened on our own dairy farm.

Farmers knew deregulation was coming. The arguments had been going on for years, and many were determined to fight it. The partners on our farm certainly were. They had invested their lives and their money in a business that operated within a regulated system, and they saw little reason to welcome changes that threatened their livelihood.

Did change happen with farmers or around them?

Farmers are well know to err on the conservative, particularly when it comes to decisions that affect their financial security. Yet some of the most innovative and resourceful people I’ve known have been farmers. Give them an opportunity they understand, and they’ll find extraordinary ways to pursue it.

That contradiction interests me because it says something about how we approach change in agriculture.

For decades, governments regulated the marketing of milk. They established prices for drinking milk and determined which producers could supply particular markets. Farmers borrowed money, invested in infrastructure, built dairy herds and planned their businesses around those arrangements.

The prospect of deregulation challenged many of the assumptions on which those decisions had been made.

By the early 1990s, the industry’s major organisations were examining what deregulation would mean for their operations. There were consultants, feasibility studies, financial projections, merger discussions and proposals for new ownership arrangements.

Todd’s account shows how seriously Australian Co-operative Foods was examining its future. The directors understood that changes in regulation, competition and access to capital would have significant consequences for the business.

I’d love to know how those conversations translated into preparation on individual dairy farms.

The partners on our farm spent a great deal of energy opposing deregulation. Looking back, I wonder what might have happened if someone had helped us devote some of that energy to examining the possible outcomes and deciding how we wanted to respond.

What would our financial position look like without regulated milk prices? Could we reduce production costs? Would increasing herd size improve profitability, or expose us to greater financial risk? What other options were available? What information would help us make those decisions?

These were conversations that deserved time, independent advice and the opportunity to explore different scenarios with people who understood the realities of running a dairy farm.

A dairy farmer cannot change direction as quickly as a government can change policy. Milking sheds, machinery, farm improvements and livestock represent substantial investments. Loans have to be serviced. Families have to live. Decisions about breeding, infrastructure and production can have consequences for many years.

I wonder how much attention agricultural leaders gave to understanding the people they were asking to adapt.

When farmers resist change, it helps to understand what concerns them. Sometimes they have good reasons. Sometimes their assumptions deserve challenging. Sometimes they have spent so long defending the arrangements they know that they have had little opportunity to imagine an alternative.

That is where leadership and engagement become so important.

I have spent much of my professional life bringing people together to explore difficult questions, and I have seen what happens when they are given the opportunity to contribute rather than being presented with decisions that have already been made.

People bring knowledge that rarely appears in a consultant’s report. They understand their own circumstances, their communities and the practical consequences of decisions. They also bring fears, frustrations, prejudices and assumptions. All of those belong in the conversation.

The seven years between the planning Todd describes in 1993 and dairy deregulation on 1 July 2000 provide an interesting period to exam

Dear readers

When dairy deregulation arrived on 1 July 2000, NSW farmgate milk prices fell from around 37 cents a litre to approximately 28 cents (Note these figures are industry averages). A reduction of almost a quarter. Add a drought to that equation and you have a pretty powerful incentive to reconsider how you run a dairy farm.

And reconsider we did!

We went from milking 80 cows twice a day to 400, three times a day. We leased another farm, hired a consultant, conducted research trials with Sydney University, attended conferences and made some enormous changes to the way we operated.

For a farming family whose partners had fought deregulation, we certainly became enthusiastic students of change once it was upon us.

I suspect our cows had a few opinions about the whole business too. Particularly the three-times-a-day milking.

 

What we need is a milk war – me and the cows strongly 💪disagree

In February 1985, Professor A. G. Lloyd contributed an article to the Sydney Morning Herald with the splendid headline, “What we need is a milk war”. I found it among the papers of the Nowra Dairy Co-operative. By then, the Australian dairy industry had been fighting itself for the best part of a century. Apparently, nobody thought it had quite finished the job.

Every farming family knows something about a long-running dispute. The cousin who borrowed the trailer in 1974 and never brought it back. The father whose succession plan left the farm to the son who gambled it away. The siblings who haven’t spoken for twenty years and can no longer remember what they were fighting about. The dairy industry had all of these characteristics, plus several thousand cows, a collection of governments and an astonishing capacity to hold a grudge.

Our story begins in 1908, when Sydney milk buyers cut the price paid to farmers from 10 pence a gallon to six, in the middle of a drought. Farmers went on strike. The young Dairy Farmers Co-operative offered seven and a half pence, helped Jamberoo clear its debts and financed a new factory. Everyone shook hands, or something approximating it. Peace lasted 23 years.

In 1931, with the Depression biting, a Sydney distributor offered Jamberoo a better price for its milk. Jamberoo had recently opened a new brick factory and owed £17,000. Dairy Farmers considered this a betrayal. It expelled 100 members, many of them Jamberoo farmers, and cancelled their shares. Jamberoo remembered. In the dairy industry, a grudge had an exceptionally long shelf life.

The NSW Government created a Milk Board to restore order. Unfortunately, the Board could declare prices but couldn’t enforce them. Historian Jan Todd called it a “toothless tiger”. Farmers received less than half the declared price. The government tried again, gave the new Board some teeth, and regulated the fresh milk industry for the next half century. Everyone complained about regulation, but at least they had something in common.

Then came 1984. George Orwell had warned us about surveillance, propaganda and perpetual war. He had overlooked the NSW milk industry.

On 9 April, supermarket owner Jim Fleming put Victorian milk on the shelves of his Jewel stores in Sydney. It came in two-litre plastic bottles and cost nine cents less. The Victorian milk represented about one per cent of the NSW market. Bill Crothers of Midland Milk described it as “only a hatful of milk”. NSW reacted as though Victoria had crossed the Murray with tanks.

Milk vendors blocked Macquarie Street with their trucks. Premier Neville Wran came out to negotiate. More than 800 farmers launched Operation Padlock, picketing Jewel supermarkets and standing outside the Midland Milk factory in Shepparton. Ten days later, Fleming conceded defeat. “We are pretty good, but not that good,” he said.

By February 1985, Professor Lloyd was calling for another milk war, arguing that competition could expose inefficiencies and help Sydney consumers paying high milk prices. The farmers, processors, retailers and vendors had rather different ideas about who was inefficient and who should pay.

Federal Primary Industry Minister John Kerin tried to bring the states together under a national plan. In March 1986, he spent an entire day locked in a room with three farmer leaders. They emerged with the comfort clause, an arrangement allowing a state to withdraw from the national scheme if another state’s milk undercut its market. NSW used it twice within a year. I suppose we should be grateful they agreed on anything.

Back on the South Coast, two cousins who had grown up together in Jamberoo were taking a much less complicated approach. Russell Fredericks managed Nowra’s dairy factory. Geoff Boxsell managed Jamberoo. During a drive to Sydney in late 1982, they joked about putting “the cat among the pigeons” by proposing a merger. They eventually brought the two co-operatives together.

Dairy Farmers tried to persuade Nowra to join it instead. Nowra’s farmers rejected the offer. It had been more than fifty years since the Depression-era expulsions. Apparently that was too soon. Six years later, Shoalhaven, the co-operative formed by Jamberoo and Nowra, joined Dairy Farmers anyway.

Then came the Italians. In 1999, Parmalat offered Dairy Farmers members $4.02 a share for part of their holdings, under a proposal that would give the Italian company control. Farmers gathered at the Burrawang Hotel, passed motions of no confidence and eventually took the dispute to the Supreme Court.

Dairy Farmers responded with advertisements declaring, “Beautiful one day, foreign-owned the next.” Geoff Boxsell wrote a song to the tune of “I Am Australian”. He called it “We Ain’t Italian”.

The court found that material distributed by the board was misleading and deceptive, although the judge made no finding of dishonesty or bad faith. The directors were ordered to pay legal costs personally. In April 2000, around 3,000 farmers voted at a special meeting. The three directors facing removal retained their seats with overwhelming support. Managing director Alan Tooth offered a memorable observation. “Any jackass can knock down a barn but it takes a team of skilled carpenters to build one.”

While everyone was fighting, Victoria decided it no longer wanted the regulated system. As the country’s largest milk-producing state, its decision left the others with little room to move. On 1 July 2000, the regulated fresh milk markets disappeared.

Within a year, average NSW dairy farm income had fallen from $82,000 to an estimated $37,000. Around 200 NSW dairy farms closed in the first six months. There were winners, there were losers, and there were families whose futures changed forever.

I’ve been looking back over these events while also reflecting on something I discovered preparing for a World Peace Day presentation to school students in Cowra. In studying the history of war, I was confronted by how persistently organised violence has appeared across human generations.

Of course, a milk war is a very different proposition from an armed conflict. Nobody should confuse a blockade of supermarket milk deliveries with the devastation of military warfare. But the language interests me. For a century, the dairy industry talked about wars, battles, invasions, threats, surrender and enemies.

Farmers fought processors. Farmers fought retailers. Processors fought retailers. States fought states. Co-operatives fought other co-operatives. Farmers fought farmer. Farmers fought their own co-operatives.

Governments regulated everybody, then deregulated everybody. And all of them believed they had something important to defend. Often they did.

A farmer fighting for a price that covers the cost of production has a legitimate grievance. So does a consumer struggling to afford food. A milk vendor protecting a family business and a processor trying to keep a factory operating both have reasons to be concerned about their future. Their interests sometimes conflict. Finding an arrangement that allows them to live alongside one another is the challenge.

Looking back, the most interesting moments in the dairy industry’s history may be the occasions when people stopped fighting long enough to negotiate. Kerin and the farmer leaders in that locked room. Russell Fredericks and Geoff Boxsell talking during their drive to Sydney. Farmers, vendors and processors sitting around George Davey’s pricing committee, part of the negotiations associated with the group the industry nicknamed the “milk mafia”.

Those conversations didn’t solve every problem. Some produced compromises that quickly unravelled. Others helped organisations and communities survive. I wonder how much of our energy, in agriculture and beyond, goes into proving that the other side is wrong. And how much we invest in understanding what they are trying to protect.

We teach children about the great wars of history, the victories, the defeats, the treaties and the terrible human cost. Perhaps we could spend a little more time teaching them how to negotiate before a disagreement becomes a conflict, and how to recognise when compromise is possible without abandoning what is fair.

As for the dairy industry, through every strike, blockade, court case, merger, price war and family grudge, the cows remained magnificently indifferent. Morning and afternoon, they turned up to be milked. They had no interest in who won.

And perhaps, after more than a century of dairy industry warfare, the question is whether the rest of us can learn to live with an outcome in which nobody has to lose.

Dear reader  FYI Dairy Farmers, with a capital D and F, refers to the Dairy Farmers Co-operative and the company that followed. Little bit of history – Dairy Farmers Milk Cooperative was formed on 15 January 1900. Sixty five stakeholders from the New South Wales Illawarra region, came together and agreed to run the organisation on true co-operative lines.

Dairy farmers, with a little d and f, are the people milking the cows. They were not always on the same side.

The reports list the costs and leave out the 4am alarm

I’ve spent this week reading 25 years of government reports on the NSW dairy industry. A Senate inquiry, two NSW parliamentary inquiries, three ACCC reports and the Department of Primary Industries’ latest industry overview.

I now know an extraordinary amount about structural adjustment, processing rationalisation, labour constraints and climate variability. I’ve also developed considerable sympathy for anyone whose job involves writing these reports.

The numbers are extraordinary. In 2000, NSW had 1,725 dairy farms. By 2025, that number had fallen to 443. Over the same period, the average herd more than doubled, from 155 to 343 cows, while annual milk production per cow increased by almost 50 per cent, from 4,827 to 7,013 litres.

The average herd has more than doubled, while each cow is producing nearly half as much milk again.

Apparently, the solution to having fewer farmers is to give the remaining ones twice as many cows and expect each cow to produce half as much milk again.

My family has been milking cows in this district since 1831, so I have some idea what happens behind those impressive statistics.

The reports list labour constraints. That’s the relief milker ringing at 3.30am to announce that his car has broken down. The cows, unfortunately, have not received the memo.

Input costs include the hay you bought in March for twice what you paid last year because the rain stopped in January. Land values are the neighbour selling to a developer, while your children calculate whether they could ever afford to come home and take over the farm.

Processing rationalisation is the letter announcing the closure of the dairy factory your grandfather helped build. Your milk will now travel another two hours to be processed somewhere else. The report calls this improved industry efficiency. Your grandfather might have had another description.

And then there’s the weather. The official terminology includes “climate variability, rainfall and irrigation reliability, heat and humidity, and natural disasters”. My friend Kate calls these things headwinds.

Dairy farmers have been dealing with them for generations. In a 1976 paper I found among the Nowra Dairy Co-operative records, Bega farmers said it like it is

“Come fire, flood or drought the milk must be produced.”

I came across a submission from Jackie Norman to the NSW parliamentary dairy inquiry. Jackie started dairying at 19. Looking back on what she called the industry’s golden era, she recalled that the hours were so long and the demands so intense that there wasn’t even time to prepare proper meals.

The golden era! I’d hate to see what she put down for the difficult years.

Of course, you could replace the dairy farm with almost any small business. The government reports would list compliance costs, energy prices, wages and productivity.

The café owner would tell you about doing the BAS at the kitchen table at 10pm. The plumber would mention the invoice that’s been overdue for 90 days, from a customer big enough to make chasing payment uncomfortable. The shopkeeper could describe the summer storm that flooded the premises the week before Christmas, after all the stock had been paid for.

And every small business owner knows the experience of covering for an employee whose family has had an emergency. Policy researchers have a term for this: lived experience.

I’ve been thinking about those 1,282 dairy farms that disappeared from NSW over 25 years. Some farmers retired. Some sold. Some changed direction. Others fought for years to keep going before finally deciding they’d had enough.

The government reports record the closures, the increase in herd size, the improvement in production per cow and the economic consequences of industry restructuring.

What I’d like to know is how many of those farmers remember the morning they milked their cows for the last time. And whether, after a lifetime of getting up at 4am, they managed to sleep in the following morning.

WTF is agency, and why does the community sector make it so hard to join in?

The Hon. Kate Washington Minister for Families and Communities with students from St Brigid’s Primary School.

Spend an hour in a community sector meeting and you’ll hear about agency, lived experience, co-design, holding space and building capacity. Everyone around the table nods. I’ve nodded along too. Many of the people the sector works for would reach for a dictionary.

The sector’s promise is nothing about us without us. Yet we often talk about people in words they wouldn’t use themselves.

What even is agency?

Agency means having a say in what happens to you, and being able to do something about it.

Some other words we use, in everyday language.

  • Lived experience: knowing it first-hand
  • Co-design: designing it with the people who’ll use it
  • Holding space: giving people room to speak safely
  • Building capacity: helping people do more themselves
  • Place-based: suited to this town
  • Theory of change: our plan for making a difference
  • Systems change: fixing the rules
  • Mutual aid: neighbours helping neighbours

What words would you add?

The skills behind the words

Leading a community organisation comes down to four skills: curiosity, creative thinking, collaboration and communication. In my eight decades I’ve met only a few people who have all four. I believe they can be taught.

Where could we start?

School seems the obvious place. Children are curious, and what they learn in the classroom grows the adults they become

Teachers would do the teaching, so training them comes first.

The resources and the training are already here. Action4Agriculture has resources that teach curiosity, creative thinking, collaboration and communication, the same skills I teach the kids I work with. They’re available on request. Josh Farr runs the training. Through Campus Consultancy he has delivered more than 1,600 leadership programs with over 40 universities, reaching more than 100,000 students and staff. He  trains teachers too.

I’ve seen Josh in action. In 2023 he led the student workshops for Action4Agriculture’s Young Environmental Champions program, working with students from ten schools across the Hunter and Hawkesbury. The share of students confident they could do something to improve their community rose from 57% to 80%.

And the kids delivered. St Brigid’s Primary School cut its landfill by three quarters.

You can read the full report here and the case study here

Our case study calls it an “Ecosystem of Expertise”. We wrote it for government in the langage government use. In everyday language, a lot of good people helped some kids do something great. Both versions are true. The skill is knowing your audience and speaking their language.

So when we’re talking with our communities, why aren’t we using language everyone understands

What do you think?

What would change if the people we work with chose the words we use?

A ten-year-old with these four skills could explain agency better than any strategy document.

 

 

The Envelope That Left Port Moresby the Week the War Began

Ivy Irvine and her four daughters, Valma, Olwyn, Molly and Nola were wonderful collectors and sharers of Jamberoo’s history, and I’m very grateful that some of that history was passed on to me.

I was tidying it up the other day, making sure it stays in pristine condition, and came across a couple of envelopes of stamps. Having written about the work the Lions Club does for children with cerebral palsy, I was excited to see whether these stamps could help the cause.

One is a registered airmail envelope posted in Port Moresby on 6 September 1939, the first day these Papua airmail stamps were issued, addressed to Mrs R. A. Irvine, “Clover Hill”, Jamberoo. On the back is the Sydney postmark of 11 September 1939. It made its way here in the very week Australia entered the Second World War.

Jon Phipps and the late Hilton Bloomfield became known as Kiama’s stamp men, collecting used stamps and selling them to raise money for the Australian Lions Children’s Mobility Foundation. Jon carries on that work today. The Foundation provides walkers for children who can’t walk unaided. Each walker costs about $7,500, and every stamp helps. Thanks to Ivy, this little envelope may raise up to $100 toward one.

If you have stamps tucked away in a drawer, an old album or a box of family letters, please drop them at RMB Lawyers, Kiama Pharmacy or Blooms Pharmacy. Keep them on the original envelope where you can, because collectors value the postmarks as much as the stamps.

And if you’re a stamp collector, Jon would love to hear from you.

Ivy and her daughters kept Jamberoo’s history safe for all those years. Now a piece of it can help a child walk. And I wonder who Ivy knew in Port Moresby who knew she would love to add them to her stamp collection

What happens after the applause?

This post has been sitting in my drafts for four years. I knew there was something I wanted to say, but every time I returned to it, it sounded like a grievance. So back into drafts it went.

Now I know what I was trying to say.

When Bob Hawke died in 2019, the four of us who had received the Bob Hawke Landcare Award wanted to do something small and heartfelt. We wanted to make a joint statement about what the award had meant to us. Each of us had a story to tell about meeting Bob, the contribution that led to the award and what came afterwards.

Landcare Australia, which managed the award, chose another approach to its public tribute. I was disappointed. At the time, I saw it largely through the lens of that disappointment.

Four years of sitting in drafts, and some completely unrelated conversations, have helped me see the much bigger question.

What happens after we give people awards?

I was the inaugural recipient of the Bob Hawke Landcare Award in 2012. At that time it was an individual award carrying a $50,000 prize. The award has changed considerably since then. It is now worth $30,000 and can be awarded to an individual, community-led group or eligible not-for-profit organisation.

But something in the criteria remains fascinating to me.

Recipients are recognised for qualities that include inspiring others, mentoring people, encouraging action, sharing knowledge and supporting communities.

In other words, the award seeks people who build capacity in other people. But who creates the opportunities for them to build that capacity together?

Australia has hundreds of awards recognising people for their contribution, knowledge, leadership and experience. We find them. We assess them. We celebrate them. We put them on stages, take photographs and tell their stories. Then, quite often, we send them home. The following year, we may come back and ask them to promote the next round of awards.

This is a lost opportunity.

The Bob Hawke Landcare Award records its alumni, with recipients going back to the inaugural award in 2012. That recognition has value, but an alumni list is not an alumni network. If an active network exists that brings Bob Hawke Landcare Award recipients together to learn from each other, I have never been invited to be part of it.

Belltrees Public School showed me what is possible. The small rural school, with around 20 students, organised a regenerative agriculture day that brought former Bob Hawke Landcare Award recipients together. We heard from each other, asked questions and exchanged ideas. I attended, and it was brilliant. A little school had recognised the value of connecting people with different knowledge and experience and created the opportunity for us to learn from each other.

The Banksia Foundation also experimented with this idea. Award recipients were brought together to visit the businesses and organisations of category winners, see what they were doing and learn directly from them. I attended one of those visits and it was brilliant too.

Both experiences showed me the difference between recognising knowledge and connecting knowledge. You can put someone’s name on an alumni page, or you can create opportunities for people with different knowledge and experience to learn from each other.

For years I worked alongside people in agriculture who gave organisations their time, credibility, relationships, lived experience and knowledge. They spoke at events, sat on panels, joined committees, opened their farms, told their stories and helped organisations demonstrate what was possible.

Many of them gave enormously.

Too often, I watched the infrastructure around them benefit from all that human capacity without creating the same opportunities for those people to benefit from one another.

We are very good at identifying individual achievement. We are less good at asking what becomes possible when we connect the knowledge and experience of the people we have recognised.

Interestingly, this was part of what I was talking about when I received the Bob Hawke Landcare Award in 2012. I wanted to “find innovators, early adopters and people doing extraordinary things and help connect and amplify what they knew.”

Two years later, a Landcare publication described me as “a connector” and quoted me saying I was “obsessed with finding and nurturing talent, and supporting it”.

So apparently I have been banging on about this for quite some time.

What I did not have then was the question I have now.

Is the community serving the infrastructure around it, or is the infrastructure serving the community?

Over the past few months I have been conducting a completely different piece of research, interviewing people who have made significant commitments to their communities. Those conversations finally gave me the language for this four-year-old draft.

People bring enormous assets into organisations, programs, campaigns and movements. They bring knowledge, relationships, credibility, experience, energy and trust. Organisations are often very good at mobilising those assets.

The more interesting question is what they build around the people who provided them.

Do those people leave with stronger relationships? Do they have access to the knowledge of others who have travelled similar paths? Can they learn from each other? Are they introduced to people who could extend what they are already doing? Does the organisation ask them what would make the relationship valuable to them? Does the collective capacity become greater because those people were brought together?

That brings me back to awards.

Imagine if part of running an award program was asking recipients a year later: What would be valuable to you now?

Perhaps they want nothing further from it. That’s fine. But perhaps they would value meeting other recipients. Perhaps somebody who won ten years ago has knowledge that could transform what a new recipient is trying to achieve. Perhaps an experienced recipient could mentor somebody emerging in the same field. Perhaps two people working on opposite sides of the country are tackling versions of the same problem.

Perhaps the most valuable thing the organisation could provide is simply the introduction.

This does not require another glossy program. It requires seeing the award differently.

The award ceremony recognises what somebody has already contributed. The alumni community asks what might become possible next.

There is another question here too. We invest considerable resources in finding, judging and celebrating award recipients. Awards can involve substantial events, sponsors, communications, judging processes and hundreds of guests.

What proportion of that investment goes into connecting recipients after the event?

I do not know the economics of the Landcare Awards, and I am not suggesting what that answer should be. But it is a question worth asking across the awards sector, particularly when some of the most valuable connections may require little more than bringing people together.

Belltrees Public School managed it with around 20 students.

And I now understand why my original experience with the Bob Hawke Landcare Award bothered me enough for this post to sit unfinished for four years. It was never simply about a statement after Bob Hawke died. It was about the difference between recognising human capacity and building it.

Landcare itself grew from people connecting knowledge, experience and effort. Farmers, conservationists, neighbours and volunteers discovered they could achieve more together than they could separately.

It moved people from “I to We”.

An award bearing Bob Hawke’s name has an opportunity to continue that tradition. So do thousands of other awards.

We spend considerable time and resources identifying people whose experience and contribution we believe are worth recognising.

Perhaps the next question should be: What are we going to do with all that human capacity now that we have found it?

 

Social media gives us a choice between curiosity and cruelty

 

We do not have to solve world peace to start practising it

Yesterday, I put a post on our community Facebook page for a friend who had to find a new home for her little dog, Teddy.

She asked me to post it because she was petrified people would abuse her. That fear tells us something about social media before the comments even begin.

The truth was more complicated and it was also private. My friend had waited nine months to find accommodation. When they finally found somewhere to live, their circumstances meant she could not take Teddy with them. The landlord had not refused him. They were not looking for an excuse to give him away. They were making a painful decision after running out of other options.

We cannot ask children to practise peace if we do not model it

None of that was in the Facebook post because nobody should have to publish the details of their private life to avoid being abused by strangers. People could have asked a question before deciding they knew the story.

Some did. They wanted information that could help Teddy find the right family:

  • Is Teddy comfortable with children?
  • Does he get along with other animals?
  • Is he house trained?
  • Is he leash trained?
  • Is the yard fenced?
  • Can a prospective family meet Teddy and his owner?
  • Would a rescue organisation be able to help with the process?

One family said they were looking to adopt a dog and would like to meet him. Another person offered information about rescue organisations. Others tagged people who might be interested.

These comments moved the conversation forward. They gathered information, offered practical help and kept the focus on finding the right home for Teddy.

Then came the assumptions:

  • The landlord cannot refuse a pet.
  • The owner does not understand the rental laws.
  • This must be an excuse to get rid of the dog.
  • The owner should have found somewhere that accepted Teddy.
  • I could not legally rehome somebody else’s dog.

The landlord had not refused Teddy. My friend was not asking me to rehome him. I had posted on their behalf because I belonged to the Facebook group and I cared enough about them and Teddy to cop any abuse. It was also a chance to prove my community was compassionate.

People had created an entire story from information they did not have.

The cruellest comment suggested my friend was using her rental accommodation as an excuse to get rid of a beautiful dog. That person knew nothing about her circumstances, how long she had waited for accommodation or the decisions she had faced. She filled every gap with the worst possible explanation.

A few days earlier, I had spent 95 minutes with almost 100 young people at the Cowra World Peace Day Youth Forum. We practised curiosity, creativity, collaboration and communication.

I showed them a picture of a cat, a mouse and a flea. Each saw the same situation differently. The cat, the mouse and the flea had different information, different concerns and a different view of what was happening.

Then they met Pickles. The students could not discover Pickles’ story by guessing. They had to ask questions, listen to the answers and use each answer to decide what to ask next.

I also showed them someone pushing into a tuckshop line. At first, the person looked rude and entitled. Then the students learned she was collecting a first-aid kit for someone who had been injured.

The picture had not changed. The information had.

The Facebook discussion about Teddy became the same lesson played out among adults.

Some people saw a gap in the information and asked a question. Others saw the same gap and inserted an accusation.

The people who asked questions helped. They learned more about Teddy, offered advice, found possible families and identified safer ways to manage the adoption. The people who made assumptions added distress to someone already going through a painful time.

Every conversation is a chance to practise peace

Curiosity would not have required a long conversation. One question could have changed everything:

“Can you tell us more about the circumstances?”

That question leaves room for an answer. An accusation closes the door before the person has spoken.

I keep wondering what those young people in Cowra will do the next time they see something that looks wrong. Will they decide they already know the whole story? Or will they remember the cat, the mouse and the flea, Pickles and the person pushing into the tuckshop line?

Will they ask another question before they judge?

After reading the comments about Teddy, I hope they do.