verging_on_random

Damn conscience votes …

Our Prime Minister prides himself on being a strong leader … one who possesses moral clarity, if you’re not with us you’re against us and so on. He’s told us so many times.
Which makes his response to the stem-cell research debate so out-of-character. He just can’t make up his mind … he’s been “wrestling with the issues” … because it’s like, really really complex (unlike issues like global warming, the War On Terror and the way to deal with asylum seekers which are really really simple). In my cynical way I think what he really means is that he’s been finding excuses not to express a view in the hope that the issue will get killed in the Senate and he’ll never have to tell us what his opinion is.

Well he’s out of luck because the Senate passed a private member’s bill last night and now the debate will move to the House of Representatives. Perhaps Howard can manage things so it comes on for debate when he’s called way on urgent business elsewhere.

This is Howard’s interpretation of ‘leadership’. When the polls tell you what your core supporters already believe then you trample over the media scrum to get to the camera or the microphone and keep yapping the same thing in shrill tones.

But when an issue comes up where the core supporters’ views are ambiguous, then duck and cover … keep wrestling with it until you can find a meaningless formula that won’t offend any of them.

Howard gave another clue to his idea of ‘leadership’ the other day. He said that if all the other countries in the world came up with a new treaty on global warming, then he’d be prepared to ‘lead’ Australia into it. Wow, how brave.

Governments are increasingly being confronted with issues like stem-cell research and global warming that can’t be reduced to one-dimensional economic analysis or to pathetic ‘freedom-loving countries v filthy terrorists’ rhetoric. These kinds of issues demand a principled response - they require governments to refer to a framework of moral logic as opposed to a simplistic set of one-size-fits-all ‘values’. No wonder our Prime Minister has trouble responding, because the only framework he’s had for 30 years is the John-Howard-for-PM framework.

The hidden casualties

One of my favourite newspaper features is ‘Two of Us’ in the Sydney Morning Herald’s ‘Good Weekend’ supplement. Other people must like it too; it’s now also a show on SBS.

‘Two of Us’ describes its subjects in a completely non-judgemental fashion. It reminds readers that many Australians don’t conform to the ‘battlers/middle Australia’ stereotypes that our political leaders parrot endlessly in their propaganda. It forces readers to confront the reality that many Australians aren’t coping terribly well with contemporary society. Not everyone is busily accumulating wealth, or trying to. The biggest concern in many people’s lives is not the prospect of another rise in interest rates - it’s the fact that they are personally unhappy. Unhappy because they feel little control over their own lives, their relationships with society are dysfunctional and they have no hope for the future.

Not all the people featured in ‘Two of Us’ are like that of course. Many are cheerful, positive individuals who’ve found individual contentment despite not fitting into societal norms. But today’s featured pair are especially poignant reminders of the hidden casualties of our individualistic, materialistic society.

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be an online version of the story, although there’s an earlier news story about them here. I can’t say that I feel the slightest warmth towards these women and I’d go to considerable lengths to avoid having to spend any time with them, which probably says more about my capacity for compassion than it does about them. But their story does make me extremely sad. And angry in a vague way, not at them, but because I know many people whose reaction to the story would be to label the women freaks who had somehow brought all their problems on themselves.

I see a lot of unhappy people where I live now. My closest neighbour is a single mum with two pre-school kids. Most of her day consists of her screaming at them and vice versa. Other neighbours alternate between sitting slumped in front of the TV and having interminable conversations with each other in which they vie to see who can express the most virulent hatred of the world they live in. You can almost see the venom spreading around them like a cloud as their faces get redder and more contorted. Still others drift apathetically from one welfare payment to the next: one day of living like a millionaire and 13 days of dodging debt-collectors and begging for charity. These people abandoned conventional concepts of dignity and self-respect a long time ago.

None of our political leaders seems concerned about people like these any more. I doubt that many of them are even conscious of their existence, except in a nebulous ‘Oh sure, we must have a safety net for the genuinely disadvantaged’ kind of way. The trouble is these people aren’t disadvantaged in any way that you can put your finger on. They’re not ill (well except maybe for the women in ‘Two of Us’), or disabled. They just can’t find a role in contemporary Australia that offers them any kind of good life, in either their own estimation or that of others.

That’s the hidden tragedy of this country and one that a Labor government would do nothing to resolve. Kim Beazley touting his ‘compact with middle Australia’ might be good politics because it’s a waste of time targeting ‘upper Australia’. But what about the bottom Kim? Who’s going to look out for them?

Welcome to social Darwinism. The survival of the fittest, 21st century style.

Groundhog Day politics

The Howard Government is old, tired, well past its use-by date. Surely people are beginning to notice that they’re still mouthing the same meaningless recycled rhetoric? Tonight for example Undertaker Phil was on the news, responding to Amnesty International’s announcement of a global campaign to have David Hicks returned to Australia. Ruddock’s response was that he would like to see Hicks tried on the charges brought against him “as soon as possible”. Fuck’n'hell dude you’ve been saying that for four years. When do you finally admit that “as soon as possible” just isn’t going to happen? What’s your Plan B?

More importantly, let’s hope more and more people finally notice the endless repetition of this drivel and work out that this government substituted spin for substance a looooong time ago.

Unfortunately, the government-in-waiting is often guilty of the same offence. The sudden acceptance by the media that “Hey! This global warming thing might actually be important!” should be a golden opportunity for Labor to show leadership. Howard and company have been contemptibly negligent in protecting the most basic Australian national interest - its long-term viability as a place for people to live in reasonable comfort - and are demonstrably the captives of big business and big agriculture. Labor on the other hand has consistently argued that we need to be doing a lot more to bring greenhouse emissions under control.

The only response that Howard can come up with to the Stern Report is to mumble about starting to build some nuclear power stations in oh, 10 years or something. Terrific Prime Minister, just the air of urgency the issue demands. It’s a wonderful chance for Labor to define itself as the party that can save Australia from the imminent environmental catastrophe that threatens to overtake it. So what does Kim Beazley say on the news tonight? “Sign Kyoto.”

Jeez Louise Kim are you stuck in the same time warp as ol’ deaths head Phil? That’s been the sum total of your global warming policy for years now: “Sign Kyoto.” It doesn’t mean anything to people. Besides which the world’s moving on from Kyoto. Where are the bold initiatives that match the desperate urgency in the Stern Report? When will you try to get the message across to people that global warming matters to their private lives in a much more serious way than the War on Terror or another rise in interest rates or even the potential loss of their penalty rates for working on Sundays? Kim it’s a lot more than signing some international treaty that hardly anybody understands. Hell, we might even have to make more sacrifices than we already have by giving up our plastic bags at Coles. When we remember to take our cute green ones that is.

The world is changing profoundly and I’m afraid our political leaders on both sides are oblivious. That’s what happens when you spend half your life in a fancy bomb shelter in Canberra, reading opinion polls.