Australia's out of step with the times, but what do we say?

by Robert McLean

Prof Nickolas Rose recently
 speaking in Melbourne.

I am almost at a loss to make a responsible, reasoned and rational comment about what is presently happening in Australia.

It would be easy to attack the prosecutors of this addiction to processes that an clearly out of step with the times, but that would be too easy, adding nothing and only detracting from the conversation, when what we need are lively and productive ideas that will allow Australia freedom from practices, and government-driven initiatives that may have been appropriate a century ago.

Australians are caught in a weird ideological trap, all Australians hope for a better life and that was promised by the then government opposition; an opposition that eventually became and now is the government here in Australia.

The Tony Abbott coalition has broken many of those promises, at least in the view of many who stand on other side of the ideological divide, or if they have been upheld, it has been in a social-political manner that has appeased the interests of the ‘big-end of town”.

I don’t pretend to be aware of all that is happening, but I am concerned that the government’s present direction takes Australia further from the social and financial equality that will be essential if we are to endure the unfolding difficulties.

Just recently the Professor of Sociology and the head of the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine, Kinds College in London, Prof Nickolas Rose, discussed “Responsible citizens for uncertain times” and in that talked about individual and community resilience.

He suggested resilience was not an innate trait, but arose from strong and bonded communities, cutting across all classes – something that is not happening under the Abbott government as it appears to disregard those who either have or are unable to understand and prosper in the type of society it prefers.

The Australian Government presently has little respect for the welfare of those who don’t fit within its ideological framework and so in legislating, under the guise of “fixing the budget”, it is building an infrastructure that suits the fossil fuel industries; allowing the creation of a port that will threaten our cherished Great Barrier Reef; dismantling Australia’s climate change mitigation/adaptation infrastructure; initiating a process whereby our health and education services will be privatized in a form similar to what has been an abject failure in the U.S.; and strutting the world flexing our puny muscles and taking the country into a war that is not only confected, but not really our business.

What do we do? I’m not sure, but listening to University of Melbourne anthropologist, Dr Hans Baer, speak recently in Tatura, it is obvious we need to restructure the capitalist system and consider seriously the question of growth.

Dr Hans Baer.

According to Hans we need a new left party, for like America, Australia has just largely one party (the Business Party) in two segments, the Liberal and Labor Parties.

Australia has many businesses reporting record profits, but not acknowledging that those profits come from serious reduction or workers – just today Coles announced 400 people would sacked from its Melbourne office.

A successful company, in contemporary terms, is one the generate the most profits regardless of how they are achieved, whereas a truly successful company should be one that makes the smallest possible profit while employing as many as it can and successfully maintaining its properties and plant, and enriching its products.

People are vastly more important than profit.