New steps on path to Reconciliation

Earlier this year, this column was devoted to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and its significance in the movement for Reconciliation.

The column observed that local action on these matters could circumvent the failure of our national government to take up the Statement’s proposals for a constitutionally enshrined First Nations advisory Voice to parliament, a Truth-telling process, and a Treaty. 

To my knowledge, nothing much is happening with any such matters at the local level in Newcastle, and Reconciliation Week and the recent first anniversary of the signing of the historic Uluru Statement from the Heart passed by with little local activity or acknowledgement.

However, state and territory governments elsewhere have recently stepped in where others have feared - or not sufficiently cared - to tread, introducing legislation that takes up some of the Uluru Statement’s proposals.

At the time of writing, the Victorian parliament is considering legislation to establish a First Nations body to advise it on matters affecting that state’s First Nations people, and to start the process of negotiating a Treaty between the state government and Victoria’s Indigenous people.

The Northern Territory government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Territory’s First Nations people, at the ironically symbolic site of Barunga, where the then Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, promised a Treaty 30 years ago.

The Barunga Statement that triggered that unfulfilled promise now gathers dust in Parliament House in Canberra.

The current MOU is part of an ongoing process designed to culminate in a Treaty between the Territory government and the Territory’s First Nations people.

In the only Commonwealth country without such a Treaty, these are significant historic moments in our national journey toward Reconciliation. 

The 1960 Referendum vote removing discriminatory provisions from the Australian Constitution, the 1992 High Court finding of Native Title, and Kevin Rudd’s justly famous 2008 Apology for the Stolen Generation – the last two of which were marked by conservative panic about the end of Australian society as we know it - marked other significant steps along the way.

Key future destinations on the journey must be a national Treaty, informed by a national truth-telling process, and incorporating a genuine voice for First Nations people in national legislation (what the Uluru Statement, and other previous Statements, have referred to as “Makarrata”).

The journey will not be a smooth one.

Some of the opposition to the recent Victorian and Northern Territory initiatives show that some Australians would rather tighten their blindfolds than acknowledge the increasingly obvious truth about Australia’s colonial past.

The full extent of the injustices of that past are still being uncovered, largely through the efforts of historians and writers such as Henry Reynolds, Paul Irish and Bob Pascoe, whose carefully researched work has definitively debunked old colonial fictions that established and sustained the doctrine of terra nullius, and exposed the falsehood of frontier settler narratives about the passivity of Indigenous people and their ostensibly primitive cultural practices.

The wealth of modern Australia is substantially built on the foundation of this dark colonial past, mired in unresolved, and often unacknowledged and suppressed, injustices toward Indigenous people.

The recent moves toward Treaties represent a significant shift in government approaches. 

Until this, contemporary policy approaches to Indigenous disadvantage have focussed on so-called “practical Reconciliation”, a term coined in the Howard years to generally describe service-delivery models aimed at improving Indigenous health, housing and education.

However, the Federal government’s controversial Intervention and Closing the Gap policies (both examples of “practical Reconciliation” and supported by Coalition and Labor) have largely failed Indigenous communities.

Last year’s Uluru Statement from the Heart was a cry from Indigenous communities for something beyond previous campaigns for symbolic constitutional recognition and the failure of so-called “practical Reconciliation”, and toward structural change.

The pursuit of justice for Australia’s First Nations people is as much – if not more - a matter for non-Indigenous Australians as for First Nations people themselves, as Paul Keating’s 1992 Redfern Statement acknowledged.

The final words of the Uluru Statement are directly addressed to non-Indigenous Australians:

“We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.”

After its rejection by the Turnbull government, the Uluru Statement is currently being taken around Australia, seeking signatures from ordinary Australians as part of a grassroots campaign for change (it hasn’t yet visited Newcastle).

In their own ways, the Victorian and Northern Territory governments have taken up the Statement’s invitation. What NSW and our local community will do remains to be seen.

Collaborative governance and the Greater Newcastle Metropolitan Plan

For anyone concerned about the state of democracy in our area - and if you’re not, you really haven’t been paying attention for at least the past six years – a proposal in the state government’s recent draft Greater Newcastle Metropolitan Plan is a shocker.

Once finalised, the plan will determine much of what happens with urban development in Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, Maitland, Cessnock, and Port Stephens from now until 2036. It will affect urban land-use, development approval, infrastructure planning and delivery, transport planning and services, biodiversity in the Lower Hunter.

The draft Plan was put out for public comment late last year and is now being considered by state government planners and politicians.

Despite significant flaws, the document has much to commend it.

Predictably, the draft plan contains the usual range of ethereal, high-minded, infinitely malleable statements about sustainability, growth, and resilience, and the mandatory buzz words (“knowledge city”; “new economy”).

It’s easy to be sceptical about all this (and I am), and to dismiss it as neo-Orwellian “newspeak”, designed to leave a warm inner glow, but without substance. But such plans do need to express the broad principles on which they’re based, and the general objectives they aim to achieve, so let’s cut it some slack on that basis.

Given the turbulent and divisive history of urban development in the Lower Hunter, it’s hard to disagree with the draft Plan’s support for a new model of collaborative leadership and collaborative governance arrangements, including improving coordination between councils, creating a Committee for Greater Newcastle, and engaging with young people and community groups who tend not to get involved in strategic planning.

All well and good so far. Then this clanger:

“Hunter Development Corporation will lead the collaboration processes”.

Say what…?

For those familiar with the role played by the Hunter Development Corporation in development and transport controversies since its inception, it’s hard not to see such a statement as either utterly naïve or cruelly ironic.

Throughout its history, the Hunter Development Corporation has acted as little more than the mouthpiece of the Hunter’s development lobby.

The current HDC operates as a “Chief Executive governed” growth corporation under state government legislation, and its current CEO is Michael Cassel, who was promoted to the position by the state Planning Minister from NSW Urban Growth, the state government’s property development arm. Mr Cassel’s involvement in Newcastle revitalisation project has been mired in controversy.

The Corporation previously operated under a General Manager, who was responsible to a state government appointed Board.

The HDC was set up under that model in 2007 by the then Labor government through an amalgamation of the former Honeysuckle Development Corporation (established in 1992) and the Regional Land Management Corporation.

In its various incarnations, the HDC has advocated both inside and outside government in support of the agenda of sectoral lobby groups such as the Property Council and the Hunter Business Chamber.

The HDC played a leading role in the state government’s decision to cut the Newcastle rail line, after recommending this action in its subsequently discredited 2009 “Newcastle City Centre Renewal Report”, which contained a deeply flawed cost-benefit analysis that falsified the relative costs and benefits of keeping and cutting the line, skewing the result dramatically (but wrongly) in favour of the outcome for which Newcastle’s development lobby had been pressing for many years.

The HDC report also falsified a Newcastle council decision supporting an “interchange” at Wickham (changing this to support for a “terminus”, which is quite a different thing), and  misrepresented the position of the University of Newcastle in relation to the future of the Newcastle rail line.

Worse, the HDC refused to correct these aspects of its report when they were exposed. That 2009 report (containing the above errors but without any correction or disclaimer) is still available on the HDC website, and has been (and still is) cited and referenced as though it is a credible and authoritative public policy document.

The HDC also notoriously mishandled clear conflicts of interest, with former senior staff having financial interests in properties directly advantaged by the Corporation’s decisions.

In this and many other ways, the HDC has demonstrated that it is an entirely inappropriate body to facilitate or lead any collaboration process, or, indeed, to play any leadership role in infrastructure planning or regional governance.

The relationship between the HDC and the region’s development lobby is reminiscent of the relationship between the former NSW Game Council and the shooters’ lobby.

The Game Council was abolished in 2013 after a review exposed major internal governance issues.

Our metropolitan area needs and deserves collaborative leadership that genuinely involves the local community in planning and delivering its future. 

If the state government is genuine about supporting a “collaborative approach” to urban planning and development in the Lower Hunter, and expects to gain any community credibility in pursuing such an aim, the HDC must go the same way as the Game Council, and the various roles assigned to it must be given to a body or bodies that have the representative legitimacy, required expertise and organisational culture to deliver.

Voice, Truth, Treaty: the Cry from the Heart

Resistance from the far right continues to impede Australia’s painfully slow progress toward some kind of reconciliation of our greatest unfinished business – the illegal and immoral colonial occupation of this continent, the dispossession of its First Nations people, and their ongoing oppression.

These days, January never passes without some kind of debate over the appropriateness of celebrating our national day on the date on which that occupation began.

In its most recent report card, the Federal government has recognised its continuing failure to achieve Closing the Gap goals aimed at reducing Indigenous disadvantage in areas such as child mortality, life expectancy, employment, literacy, school attendance and early education.

By far the most significant development in First Nations issues in recent times has been the Uluru Statement From the Heart, released in late May last year by a constitutional convention of more than 250 Indigenous leaders from around Australia.

The convention was organised by a Referendum Council appointed jointly by the Federal Government and the Labor Opposition to advise them on the next steps towards constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The resulting statement (which is very short and which anyone can read in full on the web in a few minutes) calls for a “First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution”, and a “Makaratta Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history”.

According to the statement, “Makarrata” (apparently a complex, multi-layered Yolngu word) is “the coming together after a struggle”.

The Statement says that the word “captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination”.

However, despite coming from what was probably the most representative gathering of Australia’s First Nations people since colonial occupation, the advice the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull had asked for was rejected by his government in October last year.

The government rejected the recommendation for a First Nations Voice on the grounds that it “would inevitably become seen as a third chamber of parliament” and that such a referendum proposal would have little chance of succeeding.

This response has been widely interpreted as yet another concession to the more right-wing forces inside the Turnbull government.

The Uluru Statement’s supporters – which include a significant number of conservative organisations, leaders and commentators – have questioned and challenged the government’s stance.

They argue that the Voice couldn’t possibly be seen as a third house of parliament, because the current parliament would set its structure, procedures and rules, and could change these at any time under the usual parliamentary process.

It would be a purely advisory body, with no power to disrupt or delay legislation. The significant thing that constitutional status would ensure is that the existence of such an advisory body could not become the mere plaything of successive federal governments, to create and dissolve when they wished, as they have with previous government founded Indigenous advisory bodies.

Comments from the Federal government attempting to defend its rejection of the historic Statement have been scant and superficial, with little or no attempt to provide any logical or evidential support for its stated reasons.

Its response shocked and dismayed many Indigenous Australians and their supporters, but – in the way of such things – it’s also galvanised them into action.

The matter of the Makarrata – the truth-telling and agreement process – is also still to be addressed.

Enacting this recommendation doesn’t require a referendum, but given the current federal government’s response to the constitutional Voice proposition, nobody is expecting much from them on this part of the Statement either.

As with many other issues, this may be an instance where local communities need to sidestep an unresponsive government and show the way.

In 1993, as part of the International Year of Indigenous People and in response to grassroots advocacy, Newcastle Council led the way in local communities working with Indigenous people in adopting a ground-breaking “Commitment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples”.

This document spread quickly to other communities and councils around Australia, and had a significant impact in showing how local government could support and work with local Indigenous communities, and advocate on their behalf to other spheres of government.

Newcastle Council showed similar leadership on a national issue in the run-up to last year’s marriage equality referendum.

This may be another such moment.

The language of the council’s 1993 Commitment (and its 1998 update) is entirely consistent with the Makarrata concept in last year’s Uluru Statement, and there is no reason why such a process couldn’t or shouldn’t begin from a local community initiative, especially from a council with a progressive record in the issue, and which covers the area hosting the University of Newcastle’s Wollatuka Institute, one of Australia’s leading Aboriginal Studies centres.

Such a local initiative may seem a small contribution given the magnitude of the national challenge set by the Uluru Statement, but history shows that from such little things big things may grow.

Ambivalent regional planning decision leaves crucial eco-link land in limbo

The fate of the last significant ecological link between Newcastle’s Blue Gum Hills Regional Park and the Hunter Wetlands lies in the balance, after a recent ambivalent state government planning panel decision that is likely to stimulate further attempts to rezone the site for housing development.

On 9 November, the Hunter & Central Coast Joint Regional Planning Panel (JRPP) rejected a request to proceed with a controversial rezoning proposal for the 26 hectare site between Wallsend and Minmi known as 505 Minmi Rd, Fletcher.

Newcastle Council had previously rejected the rezoning proposal in December 2015 and in July 2016.

The recent JRPP decision was made under relatively new changes to the NSW planning system that allows developers to request JRPPs to review local council zoning decisions.

Despite its commitments to strengthen local government control over land zoning, the NSW Coalition government introduced these changes in August last year in response to pressure from the development lobby.

The announcement of the changes referred to a “strengthened strategic merit test” that would apply to proposals lodged under the new system.

According to the NSW Department of Planning, JRPPs would be required to assess whether the rezoning proposals were consistent with regional strategic plans and local planning strategies, or were “responding to changes in circumstances…not recognised by existing planning controls”.

The then NSW Planning Minister, Rob Stokes, said that the new system would “end the absurd situation of proposals rising like zombies again and again in an endless cycle of amendments and resubmissions during the review process”.

In the case of 505 Minmi Rd, the effect is likely to be the opposite, with the proponent indicating to local media that the panel’s rejection was “just another step in a very long process, but we’ll certainly continue to pursue it,” and that “we just need to finesse or amend the current proposal so it’s acceptable.”

Part – though certainly not all – of the problem lies in the system itself, and the way the panel has applied the strategic merit test.

According to the minutes of the panel meeting (which can be found on the JRPP website), the panel did not support proceeding with the rezoning review proposal because the current proposal lacked sufficient “site-specific” merit, another assessment filter in the new system.

However – and more worryingly - the minutes also record that the panel agreed that the proposal met the “strategic merit” test.

The minutes provide very little insight into why panel members thought this. Presumably, they accepted the case argued by the developer and the NSW Department of Planning that the proposal complies with various regional and local planning strategies.

But herein lies a key part of the problem. These strategic planning documents (such as the Hunter Regional Plan 2034) make very broad statements about broad objectives, such as the need for housing and infrastructure, and the need to protect natural areas and biodiversity.

They indicate areas of land already committed for either development or conservation, but unprotected bushland areas beyond the current reach of the Hunter’s urban expansion, are vulnerable to development.

Developers and land speculators can find plenty in these broad strategic documents to justify pretty much any rezoning in unprotected bushland near the urban fringe that might suit their financial objectives.

Environmentalists can also point to the need identified in these strategic plans for conservation lands, and for corridors and “green grids” linking various significant vegetated areas.

The fact is that these broad strategic planning documents provide support for entirely contradictory alternatives for the future of any bushland sites in urban fringe areas such those in or near Blue Gum Hills and Fletcher.

In the case of 505 Minmi Rd, the proponent naturally focussed on those elements in the strategic planning documents that support housing development. 

But these documents, including the most recent Hunter Regional Plan, also provide plenty of strategic grounds for conserving the 26 hectare site for conservation purposes.

Given that almost all the land between the Blue Gum Hills Regional Park and the Hexham Wetlands has been developed for housing, and that 505 Minmi Rd provides the sole remaining significant vegetated link between these two natural areas, it’s hard to see how any reasonable consideration of the relative strategic merits of using the site for housing development or conservation would not come down very much in favour of conservation.

However, there is little evidence of this kind of thinking in the recorded deliberations of the JRPP meeting, at which the panellists apparently agreed unanimously that the proposal to rezone this crucial environmental site for housing had “wide strategic merit”.

It’s highly likely that we’ll hear more about 505 Minmi Rd over the next year or so. Let’s hope that panel members, who are ostensibly there to apply planning principles to protect the public interest, manage to see beyond facile arguments put by vested interests.

Labor wins Newcastle Council election

The recent Newcastle Council election has given the city its first Labor controlled council since the early 1990s.

After their bitter experience of Jeff McCloy’s brief and dramatic stint as Newcastle Lord Mayor from September 2012 until his ICAC-induced resignation in August 2014, Newcastle voters returned to what they knew in the subsequent 2014 Lord Mayoral and 2015 Ward 3 by-elections.

In September’s election, Labor’s Nuatali Nelmes was reelected Lord Mayor, and Labor won one seat in Wards 1 and 2, and two seats in Wards 3 and 4, increasing their council representation from five to seven.

Sitting Labor councillors Declan Clausen (Ward 3) and Jason Dunne (Ward 4) have been joined by newcomers Emma White (Ward 1), Carol Duncan (Ward 2), Peta Baartz (Ward 3) and Matthew Byrne (Ward 4).

Depending on who you’re listening to, Labor’s electoral success was either a ringing endorsement of Labor’s management of council over the past three years, or a consolidation of voter retreat to the devil they know, the least worst alternative after the debacle of the McCloy experiment.

The expected close challenge from the key conservative Independent group led by Lord Mayoral and Ward 2 candidate Kath Elliott didn’t materialise, with Elliott achieving less than half of Labor’s 42.6% in the Lord Mayoral contest.

The Elliott election campaign was clearly not as well bank-rolled as Jeff McCloy’s 2012 campaign, and almost certainly suffered from its association in voters’ minds with the discredited McCloyal bloc, despite the involvement of local “celebrity” candidates such as former NBN news-reader and Liberal candidate John Church, who won a seat in Ward 1, and former jockey Allan Robinson, who retained his Ward 4 seat.

They are joined by Elliott, who won a councillor seat in Ward 2, and Andrea Rufo, who held his Ward 3 position, making them the second largest political bloc on the new council.

The big losers were the Liberals, whose council representation dropped from four (one in each ward) to a solitary Ward 2 position, held by Liberal council stalwart Brad Luke.

The Liberal Party’s council campaign imploded very publicly, due partly to procedural and internal factional issues which resulted in the party disendorsing its Lord Mayoral candidate and its entire Ward 3 and Ward 4 teams, and partly from growing voter dissatisfaction with State and Federal Coalition governments. They, too, almost certainly suffered from their close association with the McCloyal bloc.

The Greens council representation fell from two to one, though their vote was relatively stable - slightly up from their 2012 result in the Lord Mayoral contest and in Wards 2 and 3, and slightly down in Wards 1 and 4.

Locally, The Greens have struggled to match the electoral successes they enjoyed in the 1990s and early 2000s, when they achieved 3 and 4 council seats, and drove a policy agenda that placed Newcastle Council at the forefront of local government innovation and achievement. In the 2008, 2012 and 2017 council elections they won 1, 2 and 1 seats respectively, and their influence on council policy setting and organisational culture has declined commensurately.

The sole Greens representative on the new council will be John Mackenzie, who took over the safe Ward 1 seat from retiring three-term councillor Michael Osborne.

Dr Mackenzie is an experienced and skilled environmental campaigner and policy advisor, but has little experience with either local government or the grassroots Newcastle community. How he manages the complex internal and external political and strategic challenges associated with his position as the new local public face of The Greens will play a key role in the future of The Greens in Newcastle.

One sad consequence (at least from my perspective) was the loss of Greens Councillor Therese Doyle, who, after internal factional ructions in the local Greens group, ended up taking on the difficult challenge of holding her Ward 2 councillor seat.

Despite a tremendous campaign effort by her and her community support group that improved The Greens’ Lord Mayoral and Ward 2 vote from the 2012 election, the numbers didn’t fall her way.

In her five years on Newcastle Council, Doyle was a diligent and principled community representative who worked closely with grassroots community groups across the city to give voice to their aspirations and concerns.

Unfortunately, this kind of work isn’t always visible to the great mass of voters, particularly in large council areas such as Newcastle, and elections can be cruelly unjust in failing to appreciate such a contribution.

Tourism and Community, or Tourism v Community?

As I've travelled around much of Europe over the past year, I've had occasion to ponder the nature of tourism, and what makes a great tourist destination.

The places that stand out as tourist destinations usually base their appeal on some combination of beauty, history, and culture, and have managed to make something special from whatever their circumstances have bequeathed.

Often - though certainly not always - this involves developing a signature event, that reflects, affirms, complements and reinforces the place's strengths.

In Newcastle, Surfest is an excellent example of such a signature event: it was developed and run by the local grassroots surfing community, and builds on the city's rich surfing history and beach culture. It helps to keep the city on the national and international surfing map, attracting competitors and media coverage from across the world, and showcases the city's beaches, our most striking natural asset.

Surfest represents a lot of what Newcastle is about, and it's proudly and quintessentially Newcastle.

The city's most recent signature event contender - the Supercars race scheduled for the East End in November - is quite a different beast.

The Supercars event was imposed on the city by the same state government that cut the city rail line, which now won't be available to deliver the crowds to the event.

The only relationship the event has with any local pre-existing Newcastle phenomenon is that it's in the same general area that was notorious for decades as a hang-out and informal speedway for out-of-town rev heads, until the council and the state government stepped in to stop it.

The Supercars event scrawls its signature across the East End landscape like a deep scratch .

I've written before about the enormous opportunities Newcastle has to provide what the tourism industry calls a "high quality tourism product".

Most Novocastrians would remember that Newcastle made the Lonely Planet's list of the world's 10 Best Cities to visit in 2011.

The Lonely Planet spiel muses on our beaches, our climate, our heritage buildings, our laid-back lifestyle, our arts scene and our history - strangely, not a mention of anything to do with fast cars.

In terms of developing our "product", the beaches pretty much do their bit just by being there. They'll do okay as long as we don't stuff them up with some of the silly pushes for privatising public space that we've seen over the years.

The climate also runs its own show, notwithstanding our fixation with exporting climate change to the rest of the world via our massive coal exports. But that's another story...

For the rest - the heritage buildings, the lifestyle, the arts and the history - they need help. Not a lot of help, mind. Just enough vision and political will to understand their tourism potential, and to foster the kind of environment that will allow this potential to thrive.

A lot of the spadework has been done. Community-based groups have pushed long and hard for the conservation of key heritage buildings and areas, and for formal recognition of the city's heritage assets.

They've often been dismissed, or even abused, as anti-development, and they certainly haven't always been heeded, but it's largely due to their efforts that Newcastle has what is generally recognised as the best collection of heritage buildings in Australia.

Cities elsewhere (such as Fremantle, in WA) with nothing like Newcastle's heritage assets, have managed to tap into the potential of their heritage much more successfully.

The key difference has been vision and political will.

Unlike Newcastle, Fremantle has had a succession of councils who understood both the conservation and tourism value of their city's heritage, and were prepared to commit the necessary strategic resources.

Newcastle is way behind in this regard, though there are some promising signs. The Council has a new "Destination Management Plan" that makes some promising - though very generalised - noises about the role of heritage in the city's tourism future.

The council election coming up in September is an excellent opportunity to ask aspiring candidates about their vision for heritage and tourism in Newcastle.

One of the obvious flaws in the new plan is its city-centric focus - it has little to say about heritage outside the Newcastle CBD, despite Wallsend's obvious assets.

In its own modest way, the Wallsend Winter Fair has become a signature local event for western Newcastle. Like Surfest, it arose from the grassroots community. It celebrates and respects the heritage, history and culture of its community, and showcases it to the local and regional community.

The Winter Fair represents a lot of what Wallsend, and Newcastle, are about, and its continued success is the perfect antidote to the Supercar Syndrome.

Long after the stain of burnt rubber from the Supercars has faded from Newcastle's streets, events like the Wallsend Winter Fair - events that are of the people, for the people and by the people - will still be there.

Long may they prosper.

Wherever you are, democracy needs awareness, vigilance and action

The different political cultures of different countries are always fascinating.

Australians tend regard politics as a taboo subject for casual or polite conversation, and many Aussies are surprised when travelling overseas, or when they meet overseas travellers, to find that this isn't the global norm, especially outside the English speaking world.

I've recently had the opportunity to experience three countries with very different political cultures and histories, and these experiences have convinced me that, for better or worse, 21st-century globalism will challenge the tendency in Australian political culture toward isolationism and apathy.

In Senegal, Africa's most enduring democracy, political awareness is relatively high, and political discussion very much the norm.

The family with whom I stayed in a village in the Casamance region of southern Senegal would regularly gather to watch the morning and evening television news and current affairs programs (both domestic and international) and engage in informed and energetic discussion with whoever happened to be around about what was covered.

The level of awareness about international issues, such as the conflict in Syria and significant political events in Europe and the USA, appeared to me to be much greater among these African villagers than among many Australians.

I had previously observed this high level of political interest and engagement when I visited Senegal in 2012 and observed the democratic election of its current president, Macky Sall, and his smooth transition to power from the country's former long time (but also democratically elected) president, Abdoulaye Wade.

For Senegal, this active political culture may be at least partly attributable to their French colonial tradition.

But there appears to be a similar level of engagement in Senegal's neighbour, the former British colony of The Gambia, Africa's smallest country. The Gambia's land borders are completely surrounded by the much larger Senegal, but it's post-colonial political culture and history has been quite different.

Gambian politics made news even in Australia late last year when its long time president, Yahya Jemmeh, who seized power in a military coup in 1994, was ousted in a surprise but decisive election victory by its current president, Adam Barrow.

The former president refused to concede, but reconsidered after intervention by the United Nations and a number of nearby countries (including Senegal).

When I visited this month, The Gambia was in the midst of subsequent parliamentary elections and many Gambians were donning T-shirts with political messages and slogans advocating democracy, and participating in vigourous political rallies, both of which would have been illegal, and ruthlessly suppressed, under the previous regime.

These political changes had imbued The Gambians with whom I spoke with a new spirit of hope and freedom, which swept the new regime to a landslide victory in the parliamentary elections, and reduced the former president's political party to a small parliamentary rump.

From what I know of the new leader and the state of his country, it's hard to be confident that he will be able to deliver on the hopes of his people, but his election may still be highly significant in the larger story of Africa's political evolution. Our Gambian taxi driver was convinced that democracy now had a firm and irreversible foothold in his country, and that the Gambian people would never again allow another dictator. Time will tell.

I'm now in France, in the run-up to the first round of its imminent presidential election. Few countries can claim such a decisive role in the history of modern democracy as France, and the Gallic fervour for political engagement is famous.

Just around the corner from where I am staying, a government building prominently displays the proud revolutionary cry of France's national motto: "liberte, egalite, fraternite", and even with my poor French I can discern the unmistakable signs of political engagement in overheard snippets of street and cafe conversations, and glimpses of posters and newspaper headlines.

France is a mature western democracy, and in the wake of Brexit, Trump, terrorism, and widespread conflict over national identity and the impact of refugees, the French presidential election will have international implications as a barometer of the global political zeitgeist.

Marine Le Pen, the far-right, anti-immigration leader of France's National Front Party, is tipped as almost certain to make the final round of the election - a run-off between the top two candidates from the first round - and may well become the next French president.

So much of politics is about momentum and morale, and the ripples of such a victory in a nation so symbolically significant as France, would certainly boost the political hopes and ambitions of right wing groups and parties around the world, including in Australia.

Unlike Australia, France doesn't have compulsory voting. Even so, more than 80% of eligible French voters turned up for the first round of the 2012 French presidential election, and if the size of the crowds for candidate rallies in the current election campaign are any indication, turnout will be similar this time around. This aspect of French political culture may well be the decisive factor in preventing a right wing victory.

Whatever the outcome, my experience here and in Africa has confirmed my conviction that, from Senegalese villagers, to Gambian taxi-drivers, to French cafe-goers, to antipodean Australians, the right and responsibility for building a better, more democratic world, belongs to all of us, and will require our awareness, vigilance and action.