We don't need a new government, we need new and improved governance

Rather than a new government, Australia needs new and improved governance.

"Surviving the Century" - writings
 about what we will need to
 do to survive the 21st Century.

All the options open to us on September 7 are about more of the same and even a casual look at history illustrates that the liberal democracy of modern Australia is both regressive and inadequate, just as are their counterparts around the world.

The classical Greek philosopher, Plato, argued that democracy’s natural evolution was to that of an authoritarian government.

Australia has what by name is a democracy, but which in practice is an authoritarian government; a government which is manipulated by the elites for the elites making a lie of lie of Abraham Lincoln’s observation: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people”.

The most pressing problem facing Australia, and the world, is the constant corrosion of our climate, a dilemma that no liberal democracy anywhere in the world is able to address for it is deep in the embrace of the corporations’ “responsible men”.

Looked at closely and dispassionately, liberal democracies everywhere are beholden to corporate power and are subsequently powerless to stop the environmental degradation big business rains down upon us in the name of progress, profit and growth.

What is presently known as a liberal democracy is little more than a corporate puppet: its survival is intimately implicated in and dependent upon big business whose only responsibility is to ensuring a profit for its shareholders, with scant regard for the earth’s biosphere and or its finitude.

The externalities of business, being the environment upon which our survival depends, is not considered in any agreement and so what is known as “the commons” (our atmosphere, oceans and soils) along with every example of our flora and fauna, is left in a degraded condition.

Liberal democracy is a fine idea, but its corruption and distortion has littered the journey from conception to reality and so now what exists is a sliver of what was intended.

Discussing humanity’s survival in his book, “Surviving the Century: Facing Climate Chaos and Other Global Challenges” Herbert Girardet wrote: “If we embark on this, the most difficult journey humanity has ever undertaken, with the steering wheel still in the hands of the limited-liability corporations mandated to maximise profits, then we will never arrive”.  

The world’s corporations have liberal democracy in a choke hold and with this form of governance about to draw its last breath, those of us who value decency, fairness and truth, and who are eager to leave the world in a state in which our children and grandchildren, and their children, might flourish, need to step-up and do all they can to dilute the power and influence of those whose oxygen is growth, profit and dominance.