Looking for inspiration
Sunday’s newspaper reading over breakfast was meant to be a civilising moment, a chance to catch up on the latest cultural offerings and partake in some incisive analysis of the latest news. Sadly reading today’s news is a risky exercise, unless of course you happen to think as Murdoch does that the most important thing in Australia is a public apology by the Pope for the deviant behavior of his disciples.
The risk is that you might just discern some deep political malaise affecting a world confronting some rather crucial issues, things like climate change and declining resources. Throw into the mix the resurgence of violent extremism, the threat of another Middle East implosion and the seeming insurmountable problems of disease, poverty and malnutrition and it is easy to see why people seem content to get fixated over a hollywood celebrity’s birth event.
However there is some hope, and it would seem that our good friends across the ditch have the right idea. The Kiwis are pretty famous for punching well and truly above their weight, you only have to look at how often their national sports teams give their Aussie counterparts a regular thrashing or how often a NZ creative talent is unceremoniously adopted as an Aussie to see how much ability comes from the land of the long white cloud. So it is no surprise that I read today that Helen Clark’s government is busy nationalising key industries, in particular I was heartened to read they have just nationalised the rail and ferry network in that country.
It is interesting that here in Oz little coverage was given to the overly socialist actions of the NZ Labor government. Certainly the British press offers far more coverage than does the any indigenous aussie news outlet which seems quite paradoxical, after all the UK is on the other side of the planet with regard to NZ and Australia on the other hand is supposed to be a close friend and ally to the Kiwis. As far as Fairfax is concerned, The Brisbane Times has little gem meanwhile good ole aunty obviously thinks this story from almost 8 weeks ago would suffice.
The case for nationally owned assets that provide an essential service to all has always been difficult for the champions of capitalism to argue against. In part their argument has always rested on a claim, difficult to actually verify, that market forces will ultimately produce a service equal to a universal nationally provided service. The problem is that the very market forces that the capitalist espouse depend in large part on an unequal and unfair society, something that is fostered and encouraged by a free market idealogy. Ultimately we end up in situation where only the rich can afford anything of value while everyone else has to slave away for an increasingly smaller slice of the pie. Often this thinking is couched in terms of “reward for effort” or “encouraging initiative” when the reality is that all that is encouraged is a dog eat dog mentality that acts against the common good.
So the advocates of privatisation have had a field day up until now, whole slabs of commonwealth assets have be flogged off and we now have the rather dubious scenario of governments rolling in cash but still unable to implement any structural change for fear of offending key economic stakeholders. As our friends in New Zealand have rather astutely observed, having key public assets in public hands is ultimately a more secure long term option. That is not to say that private enterprise organisational skills could not achieve similar outcomes, rather it is simply an observation that certain services that sustain a society can only be provided by an entity that does not place as its highest priority always increasing profit returns to stockholders.
Only by acting together do we have any real chance of averting the doomsday scenarios that abound. Its not rocket science and it would seem at least the Kiwis have decided to do something other than play politics.