Politics in Oz
Bernard Keane writing today in Crikey paints a pretty sad picture of Oz politics. Unfortunately he’s also pretty well summed up the failure of this new Labor government to actually come to grips with the problems it has inherited. The current challenges facing us down under are all the more difficult because there seems to be a rather depressing “head in the sand attitude” currently being expressed by the incumbent media, with the ABC leading the way.
We have huge problems facing the world right now! Food is running out all over the place. This is very very bad, it makes people angry and it undermines peaceful coexistence. Unfortunately in the fat capital of the world, we here in Oz don’t seem to understand how important having enough to eat is to the majority of the world. Like our grossly overindulgent friends in the US and elsewhere in the west we are far more obsessed with having enough cheap petrol to put in our nice new shiny cars. The current media frenzy about petrol and the hijacking of political debate on the subject seems to have completely obscured the 5000lb elephant in the room, the lack of food for an ever increasing world population and the impact of climate change on existing agriculture.
Anyone who expected Kevin Rudd to be the man to help lead us thru this difficult time really should have their head examined. However it must be said that John Howard was even less likely to be able to act in the way we need. The failure of the political system is simply to be expected given the short term thinking that predominates in a three year electoral cycle and the ownership of the media by powerful vested interests. Things won’t get better by themselves and history is littered with examples of what happens when people fail to act when they can. The sort of things we need right now if we are serious about the issues ahead are seemingly way beyond our mandarin speaking Kev. Things like major investments of public funds into carbon neutral and sustainable energy sources that will deliver results in the next 3 to 5 years, not piddling little feasibility studies but real tangible substantial reductions in the amount of coal we burn for electricity and oil we use for transport. Its not beyond doing but it involves a degree of honesty currently lacking in the whole sorry debate.
The Murray Darling river system is probably a goner so we also need to really start thinking about where to move our agriculture and it would be a real bonus if we didn’t fuck the country up any more than we have in the past. And we need to decouple ourselves from the western myth that unlimited consumption is in our best interests. Maybe we should ask the aborigines how they managed to live here for thousands of years without turning the place into a dustbowl.
These things don’t sound too bad, but as Bernie points out, implementing any sort of policy that brings any of this about is going to be very unpopular in the short term. Generally very unpopular political decisions have a habit of being made in situations where people really have no choice and more often than not are made with under the guise of a national emergency. The time for easy political decisions is long gone. Pity.
