AFTER THE ELECTION IS OVER …
Nurturing Justice 11 (2007)
A certain political leader opined the other day, "So if Labor and Coalition policies on the economy are basically the same, why should anyone want to risk a change in Government?"
Well, how do you answer this?
We might begin by saying that economic policies are not the same because, for starters, industrial relations policy is actually about the way the economy is allowed to have an impact upon our lives - whether we are employed, unemployed, dependents, or retired. It is economy through and through. The economy is about people and caring for people - it is not just a mechanical exercise in which workers under contract allow themselves to become some kind of prosthesis to be used by profit-seeking employers. Industrial relations policy cannot avoid being about the meaning we give to our working lives which is much more than just mortgage repayments - if we can ever get a mortgage - and it is also much more than just pay packets and feeding our credit card account. And in our working life at times employees will be called upon to call employers to account, just as employers can expect a fair day's work for a day's pay. Industrial organization is no optional extra; it is vital to any well running economy.
As well, the standards of parliamentary democracy, as they are assumed by our constitution, are also at some point about "economy". Trade and industry cannot exist without good governance and of course businesses, corporations, employer groups and unions all need good governance. But there is more. The institutions of government, particularly our parliaments, also need good governance or else the consequences are likely to be devastating upon our "economy". Let me repeat an example I have been using to discuss these matters since 2002. The current leader of the governing coalition in Parliament ought to be reminded of this. He should be called to account for the fact that he failed to stand by his own electoral commitment to oppose embryonic stem-cell research back in the 2001 election. That was a change in viewpoint that was about "economics" but his reneging also violated something basic to our system of representative democracy. Yes indeed. And allowing oneself to be swayed by bogus speculations from the pharmaceutical industry when Australian agents were already into the human embryo export business well yes that was economy too, Prime Minister, under your watch. And now that same purveyor of zillions for the same research has pulled out saying it is all too expensive. Yes, that's economic management and how much tax-payer's money has gone down that gurglar as a result of your not being truly accountable in an up-front way to the electors of Bennelong?
Why should anyone want a change of Government? I think it is obvious - but that's up for discussion, I suppose. It would seem that a change in Government at the Federal level is much more likely to promote a society-wide basic re-think about how we do "politics", and how we do "governance" and how we do "economy", because if we don't begin to have this re-think and find a new way then we are simply blundering on in a no-care attitude, leaving it to subsequent generations to pay the costs in human terms, in ecological terms, in terms of human stewardship for our failure to change direction.
The enthusiastic endorsement in the opinion polling of Kevin Rudd as leader of Labor, and as potential Prime Minister, has as much to do with a widespread yearning across our country to get out of the materialistic opportunism that has characterised our national life for decades, if not since settlement. We indeed need a new direction in which to develop our national life and Labor's lead in the polls has as much to do with that yearning as it has with the perception that the Liberal-National Coalition have simply run out of ideas and are flummoxing around looking for extravagant vote-catching opportunities. The PM, despite his interventions of recent months, is not advocating a reconsideration of our materialistic direction. In that he is completely at one with Bob Hawke and Pal Keating. Whether a Rudd Labor Government can actually inspire the renewal so many are looking for remains to be seen. But at this point Labor at least gives a prospect that these matters can be discussed, after the election, a prospect that at least new directions can be considered. There are many more views that need to be heard than can be contained in any two-party preferred paradigm.
And the first question might have to be the very painful one: how do we get ourselves out of a national and regional fix caused by our own immature national self-centredness. We have become enslaved to our own economic advancement at the expense of our neighbours, at the expense of the weak and needy in our own society, at the expense of harmony in the region (think for example of the South West Pacific and its emergent instabilities and think of West Papua). By endorsing an idolatrous and false priority to economic enrichment at the expense of public justice in political matters Australia is in danger of losing its life in an economy that counts wealth in terms of financial security for itself. Instead we must find the path again for genuine care and stewardship.
Bruce Wearne
Friday 14 August 2007
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Nurturing Justice
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