The Turnbull budget will not have just the imagined impacts

People from around here will feel the impact of the recent Federal Budget, but not necessarily only in the way they imagine.

My shoulders drooped as I listened to the oft-repeated mantra of “jobs and growth” as I sensed many here would be warming up to join the chorus seemingly unaware that “less” is what we need, not “more”.

In a world seriously troubled by human-induced climate disruption, policies and budgets based on 20^th Century values and ideas will simply not work.

Rather than look back for solutions and employ ideas offensive to the planet, Mr Turnbull, and his cohort need to lift their gaze and see that the unfolding world of the 21^st Century will be strikingly different and instead of the much-cited and inappropriate exhortation for jobs and growth, our leaders should be helping create and build a community able to thrive in an energy constrained future.

Such an idea undoubtedly doesn’t fit with the ideologies of either of Australia’s major political parties with both pandering to the populist ideas and values that have hardened since the Industrial Revolution to become an entrenched societal practice.

Living here in the Goulburn Valley doesn’t provide us with any protection from climate change for the south-east corner of Australia is experiencing changes to both weather and seasons, just as is the case around the world.

With the ideologically trapped Federal Government turning its back on climate science and our State Government doing something but treading carefully for fear of breaching its limited mandate, the responsibility to actually do something now falls upon the City of Greater Shepparton.

That would not be unusual, for while many national governments hesitate and procrastinate, and state bodies call for yet another report, many cities have taken up the dropped batten and have introduced projects and ideas into their respective Local Government areas that will lead to resilience and sustainability, and along with that play their part in the wider reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.

Malcolm Turnbull needs to thinking
innovatively about tomorrow.

And so what do we do?

Let’s begin with the city’s transport strategy, which presents us with a wonderful opportunity to think deeply and seriously about what the Shepparton of tomorrow should look like, how it should work and how the people who live here should move about.

Yes, a wonderful opportunity, one which is either the moment when we decide to create a city able to cope with the climate disrupted future or opt for the status quo and wander aimlessly down the same endless and, as time will show a rather rough road.

Courageous decisions will see a city that prioritizes and is friendly to pedestrians; encourages cyclists in the same way; introduces electric (solar charged) transit; and produces reasons about our need for sophisticated inter-town public transport (trains, light or otherwise) that eclipse any contra-arguments put by our State or Federal Governments.

Idealistic? Yes, but if we are to find our way through the troubled times ahead, it is essential we think differently and escape from the fossilized ideas of the current Federal Budget, presented as an “economic plan for the future”.

Take a deep breath, dear reader and look for the cause, rather than at the symptoms

Take a deep breath, dear reader – rather than piecemeal, band-aid handouts from our governments, State or Federal, aimed at the symptoms of society’s ills, we need to look at and treat the cause.

Those symptoms of troubles in our communities are easy to spot, but the cause of those ills are frequently hidden within and behind political and corporate propaganda and populist views that avoid facts and are founded on little more than emotive puffery.

As suggested, take a deep breath for we have been duped, and the world’s prevailing economic system favours only about 60 people, who between them control more wealth than nearly half the world’s population.

While that 60 or so wallow in their wealth, there are billions who live in either poverty, just scrape by or are of the “precariat” class; that is they live precarious lives as they are uncertain of their work, food and housing.

The call by Murry electorate National Party candidate for the forthcoming Federal Election, Damian Drum, for government money to address the illicit drug ice, that he has described as “the most addictive drug ever”, may well be seen as sensible and honourable, but it is little more than another band-aid on a deeper social malaise.

(As an aside, Mr Drum really needs to look more closely at the facts as the legal and socially acceptable drug, alcohol is vastly more costly to society, both through damage to individuals, emotional and physical, and in costs to our health system, law enforcement and work absenteeism, and so rather than worry about ice, Mr Drum should focus on taming  our alcohol addiction).

So, be it alcohol or an illicit drug, they are little more than symptoms of an economic system favoured and encouraged by a handful, embraced by billions who believe there is no other way, and yet it is a process that teeters on collapse, and survives only because of public largesse.

What is going on here?

The world’s prevailing economic system, capitalism, thrived in the 20^th Century, particularly post-World-War-Two when energy was abundant and cheap and innovation, in a siren-like way, led us through what was to become known as the “great acceleration” when everything seemed possible and the only limit was our imagination.

However, the capitalism that solidified during that era as the pre-eminent economic system is broken and the technology that expanded and enhanced our post-WWII experiences advances appears poised to implode.

Thinker and author, Jeremy Rifkin, recently said that we are now living with the “internet of everything”, and this digital technological advance is such that it has eroded the marginal cost of most goods, and as such is like a dagger to the heart of capitalism.

And American author, former professor of the Harvard Business School, political activist, prominent critic of corporate globalization, David C. Korten said, “We need an economy that values life—not money—and safeguards a living Earth.”

Yes, capitalism is slowly crumbling for it has reached the end of its useful life and rather than lament its demise; a demise that will signal the end of distasteful economic inequality and inequity that has plagued at least half the world’s population; we need to sort through and settle on a governance process that is about sharing, collaboration, decency, equality in every sense, and, importantly, will enable humanity to understand and stand shoulder-to-shoulder as it addresses the unfolding difficulties of a human-disrupted climate system.

Much said about 'riots', now it's time to really think about why they happened

Most of us have heard, read or seen stories about the recent Melbourne Moomba Federation Square “riots”.

One of the hazy images taken during the
the so-called "Federation Square riots".

Some immediate reactions about how we should discipline those who crossed certain social mores are as inappropriate as the behaviour of those so-called “rioters”.

Before rushing forward to damn participants, we need to step back, and think for a moment, and in drawing what some might believe is a long-bow, consider it was generally the broader behaviour of our society that contrived to create those events upon which many have frowned.

“Impossible” I hear many readers muttering.

Society has failed when its narrow focus measures a person’s success and usefulness to their respective communities on a scale that many thinkers see as antithetical to the broader health of the planet and humanity generally.

What we saw at Federation Square was little more than a few voiceless people who ruffled the edges of what is considered normal to illustrate, as best they could, that the workings of society favour only a few and disillusion and disempower the rest.

Does Shepparton have an equal? Of course, but not yet apparent or of the scale witnessed recently in Melbourne.

A glance at Shepparton’s statistics will illustrate discontent among a raft of people; people unable to find their place in our community; people disengaged from education, work and who live without a sense of belonging; they live with a sense of disconnect, a sense they are not a part of our community.

The Melbourne ”rioters” and Shepparton’s disenfranchised need to be included, embraced for nothing alienates a person faster or more thoroughly than disinterest and sensing that indifference, people often go to extremes, crossing social boundaries to remind us of their existence and that they do matter and have opinions worth considering.

Inclusion is an illustration of care; a caring behaviour produces better people running counter to our market economy that is morphing to become a market society in which everything, even kindness is being commodified, that is it can be bought and sold, it is given a market value.

So rather than seeing people as units of profit and loss, we need to embrace them as mums and dads, brothers and sisters, family and friends, workmates and colleagues, and simply as people with feelings just like you and me.

Stand guard over everything that is public, from education through to health and transport, and prevent, if you can, privatization (a code-word for private profit and disregard for the public), for despite the corporate rhetoric, the sale of public assets is not in our best interests. Yes, stand guard, the financialization of society is driving myriad wedges into our democracy.

And as clumsy as they might have been our Moomba rioters were a precise and timely warning that all is not well with our governance, and it would be wrong of us to casually discount that with “Ahh, that’s just city stuff” as the ingredients abound here too.

Socrates the legendary thinker quoted in Plato’s “Apology” said: “Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with reputation and honour, and give no attention to truth and understanding.”

The Melbourne “rioters” need our understanding and attention to the truth.

Disconnect between Shepparton and rich spend on military infrastructure

There is an alarming disconnect between Australia’s intention to spend heavily enriching it military infrastructure and life here in Shepparton.

Few in this community have any real and intimate understanding of what war is and why it happens, and how it can be avoided, and find themselves in lockstep with the political rhetoric of the hawks, whose allegiance to the military-industrial complex, which, through its hollow promises, does nought by worsen an already damnable situation.

Many whoop and cheer in support of the Turnbull Government’s intentions to spend lavishly on Australia’s military hardware and troop numbers.

Those same people put a high value on personal and national security but fail to understand that the much sought after security they ache for comes from within the individual and not from what is intended by the Turnbull Government.

Many see any suggestion that we should limit or reduce spending on our incongruously termed “defence” infrastructure as naïve and something that simply panders to pacifists or others unaware of human nature and within that what those same critics would claim is our “war instinct”.

However, according to a Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington, David P. Barash, that instinct simply does not exist.

Professor Barash, who has researched and written about human aggression, peace, and the sexual behaviour of animals and people, argues that those who hold to the “war instinct” idea are wrong and dangerous in clinging to that belief.

David P. Barash.

He discusses capacities and adaptations and while reading and writing are capacities, derivative traits that are unlikely to have been directly selected for, or developed, he says, through cultural processes.

In a recent article published by Aeon entitled “Is there a War Instinct?” Barash wrote: “Similarly, walking and probably running are adaptations; doing cartwheels or handstands are capacities.

“In my view, interpersonal violence is a human adaptation, not unlike sexual activity, parental care, communication and so forth. It is something we see in every human society.

“Meanwhile, war — being historically recent, as well as erratic in worldwide distribution and variation in detail — is almost certainly a capacity. And capacities are neither universal nor mandatory,” he writes.

The Turnbull Government’s intention to spend extravagantly on Australia’s military hardware is not about adaptation, rather it is about capacities; it is about preparing our nation for war.

A nation's strength is in its people, not its military hardware.

Rather than spending ridiculous amounts of our money on these sophisticated boys' toys, Malcolm Turnbull should be spending time with the Australian people building them into an impenetrable force, a society able to withstand any assaults.

Instead of buying war machines, Mr Turnbull should buy for himself a moral compass and share the lessons its points to with his counterparts and then, all Australians.

The 'solar powered clothes dryer' was unknown to young Americans

Using the "solar powered
clothes dryer" - unknown
and a novelty to
two young Americans.

Recently, I watched as two American grand-nieces busied themselves laying out freshly washed clothes on concrete, ignoring a nearby clothes-line.

Assuming it was some American “thing” I didn’t understand or know about, I let them alone and waited until when talking with my sister, their grandmother, later in the day.

She chuckled and said the two girls, both about 17, had never seen grandmother and had no understanding of a clothes line for both of them, although from different families, had never seen clothes hung on a line before as everything went through the electric clothes dryer.

Using the sun to dry things, in this case their clothes was, for them, something of a novelty, and a necessity.

That raised a few thoughts – practically every university student today has never lived without a remote “something” in their lives – television sets for arguments sake are controlled from the couch, never do you have to get up, walk-over and manually change the channel, alter the volume or turn the set on or off.

The call from our PM to be both innovative and agile is not necessarily about making remotes redundant and so force us to be more active and agile, rather it is about seeing Australia back with the frontrunners in terms of doing and creating things that boost growth.

Malcolm Turnbull sees that emergence back at the top coming through agility and innovation; that is in thinking that pushes at the edge of traditional processes and ideas that combine unlikely concepts in hitherto unimagined ways.

However, Mr Turnbull overlooks a few “headwinds” that might delay the arrival as his imagined nirvana.

Those headwinds, discussed by author Robert J Gordon in his new book, “The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War” were rising inequality, stagnating education, an aging population, and the rising debt of college students and the federal government.

Although American, there is similar breeze blowing throughout Australia; a breeze many feel as a headwind, such as those discussed recently by the executive officer of the Greater Shepparton Lighthouse Project, Lisa McKenzie.

Lisa, in arguing the “People should be the change they want to see”, talked about the challenges faced by Greater Shepparton’s children, which in many ways echoed the headwinds alluded to by Robert Gordon.

Through its “1000 Conversations” and its efforts to “introduce” our community to its children, Lisa and her team at the Lighthouse Project have created entry points; places through which individuals, groups and organizations can volunteer as mentors, share their wisdom and help the city’s children become adults with a rich civic sense; a richness that makes them better citizens and better people; better in that they come understand the value of “slow time” and within that grasp ancestral knowledge and wisdom

And hopefully, in helping them understand simple things like a clothes-line, the complexity of citizenship will unravel and their civic responsibilities will become obvious.

Mall's problems will not be answered by a 'silver bullet' solution

Shepparton's Maude St Mall.

Answers to what ails Shepparton’s Maude St Mall are not to be found in a silver bullet solution.

No one thing will unravel the mosaic of matters that demand a whole of community response; a cocktail of measures must be implemented to confront the evolving dilemmas of the 21^st Century and so see the mall become a sustainable and bustling social space.

Answers proffered by many consider the mall in isolation and so looked at and applied through that prism they might have some immediate positive impact, but no long-term value.

To take the mall so out of context is unfair both to it and the greater Shepparton community.

An architect friend, who was not talking about the mall, said his contemporaries failed when they simply drew lines around projects and created something that misunderstood its social context, had no sympathy its environment and so did not “talk” with its surrounds.

The mall should not be considered in isolation, rather as is an integral part of Greater Shepparton and by implication the wider world.

Everything and every idea around which the 20^th Century was built is changing, those ideas are slipping away, and fast.

Now it gets tough. Energy scarcity; changes to our weather systems and different social and commercial wants and needs will force a fresh way of living upon us; the city needs densification for as oil become prohibitively expensive, to find, extract and buy, transport will become human powered (cycling, walking) and public rather than private; an increasingly hot city is going to need green oases, such as the beginnings of what have now in our mall; business is morphing from market driven capitalism to a peer-to-peer collaborative process that will need near zero-cost social spaces such the mall where people can gather, share and participate in their community.

A recent discussion in Brisbane about the proliferation of enclosed shopping centres throughout Australia, and around the world, brought praise for what they are, but it was pointed out that although entry was free, they effectively barred low-income people for they had little value beyond shopping, that is spending money.

Deepening the confusion, the much lauded private shopping centres are just that; they are private and so are generally out of bounds to public gatherings that are not about adding to the centre’s growth and profit-based agenda.

Malls, such as that in Shepparton, have a different dynamic in that they are public, they are not enclosed and are wonderful places for the social milieu that is the springboard for the richness that is community.

Shepparton needs to preserve and protect its pedestrian mall; expand and build on what exists; create active pedestrian links to the city’s railway station in preparation for a dearth of energy; look “up-river”, consider how the world is changing and where Shepparton needs to be in 2050.

The council of the City of Greater Shepparton, to its credit has looked “up-river” through its Commercial Activity Centres Strategy, but has failed to understand that the Shepparton of the 21^st Century cannot be built from the ideas of last century.

Searching for Shepparton's 'Big Idea'

Age is about wisdom, but for youth, it is fertility.

And, it is from the latter that a local group is hoping this year to source the Goulburn Valley’s next “Big Idea”, from youthful minds, teeming with innovative thoughts.

Shepparton’s Slap Tomorrow is working with the city’s Lighthouse Project, several senior local secondary education people and representatives of the  City of Greater Shepparton to set up “Big Ideas, 2016”.

Big Ideas 2016 is about encouraging young people to think about and explore concepts that could successfully and safely take the Goulburn Valley, and all the communities in it, safely deep into the 21st Century.

A Big Idea working group has agreed to further explore the project in the hope of launching it early in the new school year to engage students and teachers and encourage them to discuss what big idea they would like to explore.

The student initiated Big Ideas would need to be unique, or significantly different from what exists giving them legitimacy for the Goulburn Valley urgently needs fresh ideas; ideas that break free sclerotic 20th Century thinking; ideas that are environmentally, socially and economically innovative and responsible.

Discussions about the Big Idea project have been energetic and wide-ranging, but the essence of what is imagined blends beautifully with the calls for ideas and innovation from Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull.

Those appeals from the PM will reverberate with hollowness unless Mr Turnbull and his government can legislate equally innovatively to ensure that any revolutionary thoughts from such concepts as Big Ideas 2016 don’t die in their embryotic state, but are energised by State support.

Success for most of the 20th Century’s great innovations and companies, including Apple, can be traced to work done within government research organizations.

Discussing the need for State involvement to apply the innovation needed to address climate change, the author of “The Entrepreneurial State” Mariana Mazzucato said: “…we are again in the need of an active State that takes on the high uncertainty of its early stages, which the business sector fears.”

Early discussions imagine the students, and their ideas, would be guided by an acknowledged entrepreneurial mentor who could play a role in ensuring the resultant big ideas actually implemented.

But more is needed for without demonstrable and vigorous State support, most any idea, regardless of its ultimate societal value, struggles to make it through what is known as the “valley of death” – that time from infancy to commercial maturity.

The possibility of Shepparton being a centre of excellence has frequently been discussed by some and now with Big Ideas 2016 as the focus, maybe we can imagine a better way, blending what already exists to innovate our way, driven by the fertile minds of our youth, to an even greater, Greater Shepparton.