Mark Latham, what a sad sight he is now. When he began his political career to many younger people and lefties he seemed like a shining light that was going to shake up the labour party and actually stand up for ideals. Listening to him talk now, he is broken man that has abandoned himself and the nation. Throughout the interview he said how he had chosen his family, when surely he knows that the other choice was leading 20 million people – its like the reality of the position he rose to still hasn’t sunk in.
He did hit upon something that I have perhaps written about but always skirted around, social poverty. Its very easy to think that when the media and liberals bombard you with information about how our employment rate is low and our economy is booming to think that you are living through a golden era. Indeed, things are looking pretty good for Australians especially compared to the Americans and the Liberal party deserves all the praise they get about being heartless rich criminals. What Latham said was that Australia’s problems are currently not economic or labour problems, they are social problems. The mentally ill are wandering our streets, the health and welfare systems are falling apart, education is being radically changed.
Australia is going down the route of the Americans’ in that we are becoming a land of individuals where you are what you earn and own. Of course, for myself and other’s around my age, we are being thrown in the middle of the transformation and having to piece together what old Australia was like. I think Latham is absolutely right, we have lost a sense of community, a sense of who we are and what we stand for. It seems that Australias participation in a global environment has made it slightly paranoid of either being attacked by Indonesia or being economically destroyed by being a smaller nation.
As always it comes down to what you think as an individual is important to you. I would be happy to agree to disagree except I haven’t met any commercial R&B Jerry Buckenheimer Friends loving person who can actually justify what they like and define a vision for the Australia. I don’t want to spend all day thinking about myself and what I can buy for my place. I have everything I need in the rich relationships I have with people and that is what I have tried to work on most over the last few years (and in the process I have found myself performing better at work/uni because I can concentrate on it more).
I do not want to see Australian’s think of themselves as global workers, who are just here because its sunny. I would love to see Australia develop a sense of comradery and for Australians to start indentifying with one another.
Ironically the liberal party philosophy of selling themselves based on the individual gains has bit them right on the foot. Their opposition is now well and truly from within, and they have created a great rift between the bush and the city. The bush wouldn’t need an emergency relief fund if we still had good social systems designed to support all people, not just those that John Howard believes are important voters. Any democratic system is always going to have vote importance skewed in key areas, in our system it is marginal seats. While we continue to play these small advantages off against one another, and take this attitude that “the health care/education system sucks but I have private so I don’t care” we first hurt our fellow Australians but in the long run we hurt ourselves so much more. We may feel we are shedding inefficiencies, but the baby goes well and truly with the bathwater and we lose our compassion for our fellow man.
I hate the bush, I have no sympathy for those jerks. They voted for the liberal party, they voted with the aspirational clowns, and they should damn well take what they get and not ask for a handout. We had handouts for all, we proposed a fair system we everyone gets a go and the handout was always to the bush because the cities have the globalised organisations desperately attempting to curtail the trade deficit that is created by having ridiculous numbers of farmers.
And to your aspirational allies, I don’t hate you I just pity you. Myself and most people I know will always earn more than average wage (touch wood), by voting to lower taxes and reduce government benefits you are playing into our hands and into the hands of the rich and super-rich. You are being taken for a big ride and perhaps you will never realise what you threw away when voted against community infrastructure.