Nurturing Justice 20 (2007)
On our list of 12 issues we are now up to Number 8, "Issues Of Marriage and Family - Body Politics." In many respects these issues have been dealt with in previous Nurturing Justice editions in 2007: 1. Human Seed, Law and Politics 14 March and 7. Respect for Race and Ethnicity All Along the Line 26 June.
Senate Candidates are
standing in all States; this initiative challenges the neo-liberalism dominant
in debate of the more established parties. It seeks greater support, respect
and political care for 13% of the population. It is worthy of your
support. A vote for Carers Alliance may be the best way to register your
commitment to an economy of care!
Dr Peter Gibilisco is a Senate Candidate for Carers Alliance. I
know Peter since those years when he was an undergraduate sociology student and
then last year I rejoiced to hear that he had graduated with a PhD from
Melbourne University. His thesis is entitled: The Political Economy of
Disablement. You can read more about him here. I taught Peter from the
early 1990s and like anyone else who has met him, his determination is
striking. The story of his 12 years of university slog is the story of how he
was willing to work for "as long as it takes." It is a continual joy
to me, and to all who have the immense pleasure of knowing him, to confront his
latest effort in a dogged search to do good and make a difference for justice.
But there's an important issue here
about how we view Peter and also how we respond to the election gauntlet thrown
down by the Carers Alliance. Our tendency is to romanticise Peter's dynamic achievements,
to consider Carers Alliance worthy of our vote
out of a sense of obligation to carers and those
who they care for. But is our care merely an endorsement of a hidden assumption
that our neighbours have to be helped by us to keep up? Is being a
neighbour about helping others keep up? Sometimes it might be. But I
suspect that if our amazement at Peter's achievements is about his ability to keep
up then maybe we have missed the true challenge he presents. If our vote
for Carers Alliance merely registers our
hope that society should do more to help carers keep up then I suspect
we've missed the reality that Carers
Alliance unveil for us. Let me explain
why I think we're in danger of missing the point. We should not let our
enthusiasm for justice trump the true state of affairs.
The emergence of Peter Gibilisco in
public life has not simply been a matter of him keeping up with a
society which places so much emphasis upon mobility. Peter's achievements have
come about not because society has been there to help him run around like a mad
dog like everyone else is bent on doing; his persistent work in economics and
sociology, in public advocacy and everyday life, has increasingly meant that he
has challenged the people he has met to realize that he doesn't want to be run
ragged by an economic treadmill that has lost the plot! His challenge to the
people who have cared for him - for as long as I have known him and that
includes myself - has been that he forces us to rediscover a true and
persistent reality in our lives that we, in our haste have truly and
persistently missed. And we continue to miss the point as long as we fail TO SLOW DOWN.
Peter's challenge is actually about the way our reality has been mis-shaped by
neo-liberalism, by economic rationalism. His is a call to us who share the same
society to come back to truth and reality. And in that Peter's candidature for
the Senate is a call that is well worth stopping to heed.
Peter's achievement is as much
about his giving public voice to what he has been proclaiming with his life.
And those who pull the levers of our economy, the same stage mangers of the
stage props of our political facades, continue to ignore, continue to
romanticise, continue to fantasise, continue to commercialise, continue to
rationalise, continue to Hollywood-ise, the true state of affairs. Anything,
but face up to truly hard reality which caring
requires and which carers face
day-by-day.
Peter's scholarly achievement in
his doctorate thesis sounds a loud trumpet blast. There he systematically
exposes the naïveté of "third way" welfare policy in which
perpetual economic growth is blithely assumed to be the only path by which
increased welfare demands can be funded. Think about this and we may find we
see our instinctive responses to Peter and Carers
Alliance judgments
in a new light. We may even begin to see the challenge to care in a new light. Carers Alliance may
help us see this election in a new light and if we take up the challenge we
might find it is ourselves who are emancipated - freed to care.
Are you feeling oppressed by the
election and all the propaganda? Well, stop just thinking of your own head
space. Instead, think big. Think care. Think in terms of the election being a struggle to
reassert the reality our political leaders are missing. Let me put it
this way (thanks to Richard Russell): Care
(and her sister Share) are the two
elephants in the front room of our economy which nobody is really wanting to
confront. We live in a society that has somehow lost the sense that outlaying
money for care is an investment in people, in sustenance, in our community's
connection with the natural environment and with our own 'nature'. But
instead we hear again and again that welfare money is an enormous burden, even
if it is a necessary cost and so when the rival money bags start debating
welfare it is probable that all you will hear is a mutual firm determination to
keep costs down! It is such a truncated view of reality. There's no deep-down
joy in the politics of welfare provision by politicians; there's no futures
market apparently in care. It's simply about costs, meeting the expected
rising costs, costs which we would be better off without but, oh well, we have
to deal with it somehow so … etc etc. Pathetic. More than pathetic. Care-less. Discounted care.
No. Peter's challenge and the
electoral appearance of Carers Alliance is something different. It points us to a new day ahead
for our political lives if we dare to take the economic path of care.
Here I'm simply pleading with
readers to reconsider our economy and why it needs to be re-directed to the unpriceables,
and why those commodities which do have a price in the market need to be
re-evaluated by our caring responsibilities that cannot command a price. In
social policy terms there are all kinds of issues that need to be better
appreciated here. If we hear Peter's critique of "third way" welfare,
and rise to the electoral challenge of the Carers
Alliance we
may well bless the day that our ears were opened to listen as we begin again to
live with a deep sense of enough, and contribute more lovingly, with more care for all that is
within our stewardship, for carers near and far, home and abroad. This
challenge has global consequences. Our stewardship has a global focus.
Go to Peter's contributions on the
net. Type in "Peter Gibilisco". You'll find accessible articles and
you'll be enlightened by them. Before we close I'd like to give a highly
schematic view of how Peter maintains his daily affairs. You may be able to
expand this from your own experience. It is only a snapshot.
There is not only Peter and his
needs and the needs of his carers who make sure he's in good health - think for
a minute of what it must be like to have to move around in an electric
wheelchair with muscles that sometimes do not do what you want them to do and
then when they do respond they sometimes do too much. Think about the safety
issues that arise from this kind of bodily condition. Think your way through
other implications for the mundane tasks of buying a cup of coffee or going to
the toilet. Get the picture?
And then there's the maintenance of
the wheelchair - the need for a replacement when it is put in for the
equivalent of a "grease and oil change." How to get the chair to the
mechanic's shop and then how to get it back …
Think how difficult it might be if
you are in a wheel-chair and you see someone coming who you don't want
to talk to. You and I can take evasive action (so can the other guy) - but if
you are in a wheelchair it can be all too easy to be a "sitting
duck". This is not a trivial matter. It has big implications on energy
levels and such restrictions can lead to all kinds of worries, if not
depression, and so planning one's day means all kinds of details others will
take for granted. These details need to be attended to, managed sensitively.
Then there's the gym that Peter
attends to keep his muscles in tone and keep his body as trim as he can; maybe
there's hydro-therapy and the swimming pool. And it is not just that Peter has
to have help to get changed and to get in and out of the pool; there's also a
need for him to have skilled swimmers to swim with him, to have those at the
gym who can assist and work with him on the weights.
There's the taxi driver bringing
him to the gym. The taxi driver needs to know more than merely Peter's
destination. He needs to have a good idea about Peter's needs and the condition
of the chair. He needs the flexibility in his work conditions so that he can
get to know Peter personally. This simply indicates that in order to get around
Peter needs strong and knowledgeable support on all kinds of levels and the
kind of support which is not going to eventuate if we simply leave it all up to
the individual initiative of kind people (and there is thankfully a lot of
that), or assume that the "market" will take care of it (and as I
said the market is always in need of being educated about true unpriceable
values). Of course, there are lots of kind people and Peter can tell you of the
multitude who assist him in all kinds of ways day by day. But there has to be a
well elaborated social policy framework to ensure that Peter gets the
assistance he needs and that those who care for him are able to do what they
do. There will be the person we can specifically designate as "primary
carer" but there are also other "carers" along the way in public
places (the gym, the swimming pool, the coffee shop) and transport (taxi
driver) who need support and probably also requisite technology to enable them
to give their share of care and for Peter to receive it.
Some readers may tend to think that
all this is an unnecessary diversion from the hard work I've given myself to
begin formulate principles for a comprehensive Christian political programme
and policy framework. It is not. Apart from the fact that the formulation of
political principles must always keep its focus upon the needs of real people
in real situations, the description of Peter's daily needs and the needs of
those who care for him, raises once more important paradoxes that various
economists have identified as abiding structural characteristics of rich
capitalist countries. These will be discussed in a future edition. For the
moment keep in mind that when welfare policy is debated an ongoing emphasis
upon welfare costs and keeping welfare costs down actually shifts responsibility
onto the shoulders of those who can least carry it. Great political capital is
made by those lamenting increased costs for welfare who at the same time demand
that continued economic growth be the only path to a healthy society. And the
figures confirm that with our increased wealth comes increased demand for more
health services. This is one of the paradoxes that is confronted by the Carers Alliance.
Carers Alliance might not gain a Senate seat. In NJ18 we pointed out, as we considered climate
change that "going for growth" is the confession of faith that
appears to blind and bind our political community - the two major parties are
especially beholden to this faith whatever "Christian" commitment
they may corporately try to wear on their lapels. In their view, the economy
must never be allowed to slow down - that, they say, is bad management -
and the confession becomes even more shrill as the clouds of environmental
disaster continue to gather. But Carers
Alliance is now a political voice that
alerts us to serious imbalances in our present priorities - they confront us to
say what do we really care most about. Consider the decades of
economic rationalism and how successive governments have bent their policies by
the irrational desire to put the "market" first. What
has been the result? Well Carers Alliance
is on the witness stand for the people
who have had to carry the burden of a badly managed economy from successive
federal and state régimes. Are we going to confront this burden or brush it
aside as "co-lateral damage". Carers
Alliance tells us, if we have ears to
hear, that another economic path, a path of comprehensive care, is the only
responsible political way ahead in economic management for all of us. A new
path is needed; an economy of care.
Nurturing Justice
November 2007
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