Academics From Australia

"As an aside, my father commanded a battalion during the Vietnam war and I can happily report that whatever our fellow Australians think about any of the operations upon which we have deployed, they do not vent their objections against our soldiers as they did in my dad’s day. This is a welcome development. Indeed, at no time in my thirty four years of service have we been so highly regarded by our fellow citizens. But this is a call to live to our true ideals not to rest on our laurels."

"Our monopoly on violence and the particular place we occupy in our national psyche, demands that we must earn and maintain a high level of trust among our community. They are entitled to expect more of us than other institutions – and we keep telling ourselves that we are special – and custodians of the best of our military heritage. This places a very great burden on us, which warrants zero tolerance towards those who violate that fragile community trust."

"We in the ADF occupy a special constitutional role. We train for mastery of military force and are entrusted and sanctioned by the Government to employ extreme violence in support of national interests. Moreover, I am all too aware, that in many conflicts, rape is systematically employed by soldiers against women. Any nexus between an Army such as the one I aspire to lead and sexual assault is absolutely unacceptable. I will take all necessary steps to stamp out any hint of it among my soldiers."

"I was no longer comforted by the cliché that a ‘few bad apples’ were undermining the great work of the vast majority. Nor was I willing to argue that a widely publicised incident at our Defence Academy - where a sexual encounter between a young female cadet and a colleague was telecast via Skype - was no worse than conduct among young people on civilian campuses."

"That is no easy thing for a General to say in public, and yet I have now said it publicly in Australia many times. It involves Liz Broderick, and it marked a watershed for me. I invariably recount it when I am asked to explain why I have placed so much emphasis on gender issues within the Army and why I committed a large part of my effort as Chief of the Australian Army to championing change."

"I have set tangible goals against which I am willing to be judged. Ultimately, though, true and enduring progress in the status and security of women and girls will only be achieved through the collaborative efforts of women and men. There is a need, in my view, for some men to be reminded by male leaders and champions of change that violence towards women and girls is never acceptable and that their female colleagues deserve their trust and respect."

"Of course, that is probably an unattainable state of perfection. But I hope to establish my bona fides in striving towards them through what I say today, and through my actions as Chief of the Australian Army."

"Firstly, I must of necessity express some obvious qualifications about my remarks. Foremost, I can never fully imagine, much less experience, the issues faced by any woman. I was born male in an advanced Western nation, to comfortably well off parents. I have never routinely experienced discrimination in my career, nor the apprehension of violence in my personal life. Far too many women regardless of nationality, religion, or class status have known both. Most benefits of masculinity and patriarchy have accrued to me. Nonetheless, I hope those considerable limitations in my perspective can in part be offset by my sincere intent to support women in my organisation to thrive in the absence of both."

"And finally, it is truly fitting that I bring this message to an event held under the auspices of the United Nations. The UN does so much to alleviate suffering and disadvantage amongst women throughout the world, not least in peace building efforts in fractured states and societies, where violence against women and girls is horrific in both its nature and scale."

"It is an honour to be invited to address this conference today. For some time the Australian Defence Organisation has formally observed International Women’s Day. That is altogether appropriate. However, as all of you are no doubt aware, such formalities are rendered much less meaningful unless they are underpinned by tangible progress for women. And that necessarily implies cultural change in environments which have not been as conducive as they must be to women realising their full potential."

"Science is widely esteemed. Apparently it is a widely held belief that there is something special about science and its methods."

"Scientists are typically good at making scientific progress, but not particularly good at articulating what the progress consists of."

"Science describes not just the observable world but also the world that lies beyond the appearances. This is a rough statement of realism with respect to science."

"A mature science is governed by a single paradigm."

"Establishing by observation that there is just one black swan falsifies "all swans are white". This is an unexceptional and undeniable point. However, using it as grounds to support a falsificationist philosophy of science is not as straightforward as it might seem."

"The aim of science is to falsify theories and to replace them by better theories, theories that demonstrate a greater ability to withstand tests."

"The confirmations of novel predictions resulting from bold conjectures are very important in the falsificationist account of the growth of science."

"The greater the number of conjectured theories that are confronted by the realities of the world, and the more speculative those conjectures are, the greater will be the chances of major advances in science."

"Science progresses by trial and error, by conjectures and refutations. Only the fittest theories survive."

"No matter which comes first, the facts or the theory, the question to be addressed is the extent to which the theory is borne out by the facts. The strongest possible claim would be that the theory can be logically derived from the facts. That is, given the facts, the theory can be proven as a consequence of them. This strong claim cannot be substantiated."

"Many kinds of processes are at work in the world around us, and they are all superimposed on, and interact with, each other in complicated ways."

"Which facts are relevant and which are not relevant to a science will be relative to the current state of development of that science."

"It should be no news to anyone that the perceptual judgements of individuals can be unreliable for a range of reasons. The challenge, in science, is to arrange the observable situation in such a way that the reliance on such judgements is minimised if not eliminated."

"A far as perception is concerned, the only things with which an observer has direct and immediate contact are his or her experiences."

"The experienced and skilled observer does not have perceptual experiences identical to those of the untrained novice when the two confront the same situation."

"Two normal observers viewing the same object from the same place under the same physical circumstances do not necessarily have identical visual experiences, even though the images on their respective retinas may be virtually identical."

"Empiricism and positivism share the common view that scientific knowledge should in some way be derived from the facts arrived at by observation."

"Which comes first — price being set by the intersection of supply and demand, or individual firms equating marginal cost to price?"

"You have a voice, which has been perhaps been quiescent on matters economic because you have in the past deferred to the authority of the economist. There is no reason to remain quiet."

"If a 19th century capitalist Machiavelli had wished to cripple the socialist intelligentsia of the 20th century, he could have invented no more cogent weapon than the labour theory of value. Yet this theory was the invention, not of a defender of capitalism, but of its greatest critic: Karl Marx."

"There are numerous theorems in economics that rely upon mathematically fallacious propositions."

"The term 'capital' has two quite different meanings in economics: a sum of money, and a collection of machinery."

"Even economists can't escape the fact that, as commodities go, labour is something out of the ordinary."

"Economics is not the Emperor of the social sciences, but the Humpty Dumpty."

"Not even an economist can make time stand still (though some victims of economics lectures might dispute that!)."

"Thus while diminishing returns do exist when industries are broadly defined, no industry can be considered in isolation from all the others, as supply and demand curve analysis requires."

"Though mainstream economics began by assuming that his hedonistic, individualistic approach to analysing consumer demand was intellectually sound, it ended up proving that it was not."

"With the market so much more in control of the global economy now than fifty years ago, then if economists are right, the world should be a manifestly better place: it should be growing faster, with more stability, and income should go to those who deserve it."

"This ascendancy of economic theory has not made the world a better place. Instead, it has made an already troubled society worse: more unequal, more unstable, and less 'efficient'."

"If financial markets aren't efficient, then what are they? According to the 'fractal market hypothesis', they are highly unstable dynamic systems that generate stock prices which appear random, but behind which lie deterministic patterns."

"If values are fairly evenly distributed around an average, then roughly two-thirds of all outcomes will be one standard deviation other side of the average."

"If investors disagree about future prospects of companies, then inevitably the future is not going to turn out as most — or perhaps even any — investors expect."

"The EMH cannot apply in a world in which investors differ in their expectations, in which the future is uncertain, and in which borrowing is rationed."

"Since in reality the stock market is inhabited by mere mortals, there is no way that the stock market can be efficient in the way that economists define the term."

"Trusting souls who accept economic assurances that markets are efficient are unlikely to fare any better this time when the Bull gives way to the Bear."

"The belief that a capitalist economy is inherently stabilising is also one for which inhabitants of market economies may pay dearly in the future."

"Rather like the Bible is for many Christians, the General Theory is the essential economics reference which few economists have ever read."

"If there was never any difference between the value of commodities someone desired to sell and buy on the market, then no-one would ever desire to accumulate wealth. But an essential feature of capitalism is the existence of a group of agents with precisely that intention."

"The obsession with equilibrium has imposed enormous costs on economics."

"Why do economists persist in modelling the economy with static tools when dynamic ones exist; why do they treat as stationery an entity which is forever changing?"