Noisy 'hurrahs' and a chorus of criticism meets Budget

A "business as usual" Budget
 from Australia's treasurer,
 Wayne Swan.

Noisy hurrahs matched by a chorus of criticism greeted last week’s Federal Budget.

None were right, none were wrong, but missing was the long, long, long view; something that in the contemporary conversation is called “sustainability”.

Business as usual, seen from whatever political view you favour, is no longer appropriate and that, even allowing for a difference in opinions, is what our Treasurer, Wayne Swan, delivered.

That approach to, and acceptance of, the fact that we live in an unchanging world is problematic in the extreme.

The realities of last week’s Budget infiltrate our economy and the lives of most fundamentally change little, maybe we shift from one foot to the other, but change to a different lifestyle is foreign to all but a few.

The Swan Budget went to extremes to ensure we could live life as it is – more hurrahs and applause – but it overlooked the reality that our nation should be building and preparing for a distinctively different future.

Global warming is a gathering storm on the horizon and coupled with impending world food shortages, an imploding world economy, an exploding population, oil scarcity and climate difficulties, of which we have as yet only seen the leading edge, Mr Swan’s Budget should have responded to those unfolding dilemmas.

Rather that concerning himself with the much touted surplus, Mr Swan, supported by his Labor contemporaries, needed to demonstrate courage in delivering a budget that created a platform from which Australia could easily step to address those aforementioned difficulties.

The unfolding circumstances are hitherto unknown to the human project and with the ego-driven individuality of the past millennia being obviously not appropriate, the budgetary process should have addressed those excesses.

Rather than sketch out a scenario that allowed Australian’s to continue as being among the worst in the world on a per-capita basis at pumping carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, Mr Swan should have helped us understand numbers, and actions, that would have eased, if not stopped, that behaviour.

That, of course, would not have been easy as recent surveys have shown that Australians concern for their environment, and after all climate change is an environmental issue, has disappeared almost entirely from their list of worries.

With a deep breath, Mr Swan should have used his economic tools to shape a new look Australia: one whose strength lies in simplicity as opposed to complexity; the need to switch from growth and consumption to resilience and conservation; and an Australia that understood the dilemmas of our unfolding world and was prepared to bond to address those challenges.

Fine ideas, but waiting outside the door to mug us all is “reality” and there is our first challenge, untangling ourselves from that pseudo reality and addressing irrefutable truths.

The choas of democracy is our responsibilty

Canberra's Old Parliament House is
 a museum of Australian Democracy.

Democracy and chaos are somewhat symbiotic.

 

As a political process, democracy appears to be at its best when the noise is loudest, opinion discordant and the idea of a civil and just society seemingly lost in a fog that obscures the common good.

However, beneath all that jarring chatter, flows a placid river of common intent; a commonality that bonds people, a mutual understanding and a strangely silent agreement that the process will, finally, enliven and enrich the lives of all.

That, of course, doesn’t make the art of democracy any easier.

Wrestling with the seemingly unassailable dichotomies of democracy we should remember what the former Great Britain Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, said in 1947: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time".

The success, or otherwise, of democracy is deeply subjective for personal judgment is shaped by ideology, morals and ethics.

Where you stand in life, a position that might have fell your way because of hereditary fortunes or the circumstantial happenings that might have simply dumped you where you are, is what shapes your views.

Should you have landed on your feet among the favoured few, then, for you, democracy works perfectly; the machinery of politics is in good working order; but if the events of life have not been so kind, then democracy seems weighted in the favour of others.
From this unappealing mess of personal wants and needs, peppered with ideological passions evolving from nurture, society must plot a course toward some sort of social good that allows for diversity, but in the same breath encourages a discipline that keeps the barbarians at bay.

Considering Churchill’s view, democracy does appear the best of societal administrative processes, but right now the idea that a free market unimpeded by government is testing its inherent fragility.

Free market ideologues argue the democracy they favour encourages endeavor, entrepreneurship and rewards individual effort, while those who might be called “social-democrats” see an enriched life for all arising from an understanding and appreciation of, and the application of, all that is public.

Through whatever prism you see democracy its validity depends on people engaging with the process; it depends on a willingness to declare ownership, a willingness that can only be expressed by expanding your life to encounter that of others.

Athens is the celebrated birthplace of democracy and one who was there at the time, Pericles, said: “We do not say that man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own affairs; we say that he has no business here at all”.

It is both our business and in our interest to participate in politics and ensure the chaos continues.