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.  

Celebration as free-market juggernaut staggers

The free-market advocates should be celebrating.

Holden has worked the system perfectly in that the car manufacturer has privatized the profits and socialized the costs.

In the past decade, the Australian and State Governments, that is you and me, have given more than $2 billion to the company and now, to further enrich its takings, it has sacked 500 people – Holden has pocketed the profit and we pay the bill.

Simplified equations can always be interpreted in any way preferred, but this one is loaded with indiscretions that are not a public responsibility, rather the success, failure or otherwise of Holden should be contained within the free market it so idolizes.

The world in which Holden was founded, grew, boomed and profited massively was different from what exists today; different in that growth, as it is traditionally understood, equates with difficulties we can’t yet comprehend.

Rather than prop-up what is a struggling, if not dying industry, our governments, Local, State and Federal, should be using their resources to help us understand how we can flourish in a society that is not dependent on economic growth.

That is quite the opposite of the philosophy that saw us align ourselves with an industry that because of what it is and the appeal it has to our egoistic wants, holds humanity hostage as it plunders our fancies and earth’s finite resources.

It seems our governments believe they have a mandate, and maybe they do, to ensure the validity of these inappropriate businesses; inappropriate as they are entirely about only answering wants and pay little, or no role in ensuring human needs are attended to.

We face multiply difficulties, among them the fact that we live in a liberal democracy; a fundamental good that has within it a disabling difficulty enlivened by the inability of politicians, and us as the electors, to look beyond their present terms of office.

Humans have solidified their supremacy in the food chain through their unique ability to imagine, memorize and plan ahead, skills that have been absent as we have sacrificed altruism, decency, fairness and an ethical understanding of our responsibility to care for other species and the environment on which they, and we, depend to economic growth.

Rather than support a dying and monolithic industry, our energy, and cash, should be directed at reassessing the corporate world and replacing it with a more fine-grained society that emulates the belief of Chief Economic Advisor to the UK National Coal Board and author, the late E.F. Schumacher, who said “Small is beautiful”.

If we are to have anything significant in society that has access to the communal bank, our taxes, it should be something that carries the pre-fix “public”, such as a nation-wide transit system.