I once worked for a company that claimed “its people were its number one asset.” Australian governments often speak about “Aussie battlers” and “working families” as if they know what these labels actually mean. Although Australia has so far managed to avoid the worst of the continuing global financial turmoil we actually run the risk of creating a society of extreme wealth and extreme poverty unless we change our focus and put people before profit.
Governments are elected on a hope, the hope that things will get better. Rarely will someone vote in the hope things get worse. It is important to remember that hope also elects the politician with the biggest empty promise. These days governments are more easily judged by what they have failed to achieve more so than what they did achieve, if they in fact achieved anything.
Martin Luther King once wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” As governments continue to succumb to lobbying by big business they become quiet advocates of social Darwinism, the survival of the financially fittest. So much so that today in Australia, the top 10% of earners own 25% of the assets and the lowest 10% of earners own just 2% of assets (World Bank figures). The ever growing gap between the rich and poor is wrong and is a sad reflection on “the lucky (for some) country” and a sad reflection on the direction our “leaders” have taken us.
Injustice starts in education. Once upon at time education was about teaching. It was about imparting knowledge onto a younger generation. The “business” of education has turned into a class war at the school level and a corporate war at the tertiary level. The blame for this lies with governments who have wanted to abscond from their duty to provide high quality and free education to its citizens. We have a school curriculum that has its origins in the industrial age with a heavy and narrow focus on mathematics and sciences at the expense of humanities. Governments have systematically run down and mismanaged the public school experience forcing parents to look for other alternatives in the education “market”. Flawed funding models have seen wealthy private schools build ever more grand buildings and amenities whilst the public system deals with overcrowding and temporary buildings that morph into permanent structures. The government’s “myschool” website, for all is popularity, is further evidence of the commodification of education. Public funding should be aimed at public schools. Governments shy away from direct funding of private enterprise, so why fund the business of private schooling? A young person’s future is increasingly determined by whether or not they have attended the right school.
Decades of reduced government funding in our tertiary institutions has forced universities to seek other sources of funding. This has led to a reliance on overseas full-fee paying students and “co-operative” arrangements with corporations. Major sponsors of scientific endeavour are increasingly becoming the norm and the pressure to skew results in favour of the benefactor (to keep the money flowing) is increasing. All does not bode well for the objectivity of our nation’s finest minds. Just like our school aged institutions, our tertiary institutions are victim of flawed funding models.
Students rarely attend university simply for the intellectual stimulation these days. Our universities now churn out graduates familiar with subject matter but with little knowledge. A return back to the days of free tertiary education would allow people to seek and find their vocation while they relish the thought that they were not going to be in perpetual debt for wanting to learn.
Our TAFE system is in even more strife. For all the screams of skills shortages there doesn’t seem to be a concerted effort from governments to do much about it. Funding for TAFE has shrunk by 22% since 1997 (ref: apo.org.au). By having a long term vision for tertiary education and by giving our citizens the opportunities to find their own way, we will have a real chance of tackling economic injustice and creating the smart country we need for the future.
The federal labor government recently introduced us to the “most important change in the health system since the introduction of Medicare.” The meeting to decide how best to “revolutionise” health was a meeting between politicians and it wasn’t even about health, it was a discussion about numbers. Doctor numbers, nurse numbers, bed numbers and the most important numbers…fiscal numbers. The prominent focus on bed numbers suggests a lack of focus on preventative health. Our leaders have no idea how to keep people out of hospital and their only solution is to accommodate more infirmed. The government convened a group of health experts called the national health and hospital reform commission (NHHRC). They produced a report that laid the foundations for improved health delivery in this country; the government ignored most of its recommendations. Why? Because the eight politicians holed up in a meeting room made political decisions not decisions in the best interests of the people.
Governments have a responsibility to provide all citizens with the resources and opportunities essential to good health. Good health is a basic right that should be based on need not on ability to pay. The NHHRC recommended focussing more effort on indigenous health, mental health, dental health and preventative health. Keeping people out of hospital should be the goal and this can only be achieved through preventative measures like annual checkups, active living and education. All basic health measures should be free to all citizens. If we want a truly equitable society then giving everyone the same access to health is a goal worth chasing.
Health, education and crime are inextricably linked. OECD statistics show that healthy and educated societies have lower crimes rates and lower instances of violence. Put simply, a healthy and educated individual is less likely to commit violent crimes. Treating drug addicted individuals as criminals does nothing to change their behaviour; in addition, it increases the burden on our criminal justice system. Research and experience shows that by treating the addiction there is a significant reduction in the chance of re-offending. Indeed this has been the experience in the NSW “Drug Courts” where “offenders” are put in programs to help them with their addiction. The system works and needs to be expanded.
By having a society that is educated and healthy we can reduce crime statistics in the long term. Violence is spread by injustice and inequality; by creating a fairer society through opportunities in education and equity in health care we can reduce violence and therefore crime.
Fear mongering is rife in our society be it in the media or our government. Governments help to create anxieties and then go about making you feel that they are the only ones who can take the anxieties away. But rarely do they do anything about it, thus ensuring they perpetuate the cycle of fear. How safe we “feel” is linked strongly, I suggest, to the way our local community is designed and the way we interact with each other. By returning communities to the people we can then start to address the fears.
The local community is made up of both people and the built environment. Part of what I believe makes a great local community are people friendly streets achieved via urban design and amenities. By creating aesthetically pleasing streets people will be drawn to them. At the moment much of our local community open space has been handed over to concrete and asphalt. This needs to be reversed. Not only is concrete and asphalt featureless it is also a heat sink that increases temperatures in these micro environments. Having open green spaces and community gardens will facilitate interaction between people. Green spaces are even more important in this era where medium and high density housing is being actively encouraged by governments. More green spaces would help to reduce the effect of noise, pollution and congestion on people’s well being.
Creating real transport options is also a key to well-being in our community. It is not simply a matter of providing more public transport – although this is obviously important – it is mostly about tipping the scales towards a more equitable distribution where motorised transport is treated on the same level as all other modes of transport. The default position by governments has always been to build more roads. This needs to change. Investment in other modes of transport is long overdue. When this happens, people will finally begin to have real choices when it comes to their own mobility options. Again, this is about putting people first.
Local community is also about good governance. State governments have systematically taken power away from local governments – this has to be addressed. Local government areas should have the autonomy required to make decisions for their local community. Why, for example, should a state government be allowed to impose a decision on a local community if the local community clearly do not want it? This is a democracy where local decisions about local issues should be the norm not the exception.
Importantly, we do not live in an economy; we live in a society that is embedded in a natural environment. Therefore we need to recreate our natural urban environment. We need to think about clean energy and sustainability in everything we do. On Easter Island their “economy” was that of building ever grander statues. In the process of creating bigger and better statues they neglected the environment that sustained them. That was their downfall and should be our warning. We simply cannot continue down the road we have been on for the last 50 years. Governments from a generation ago can be forgiven for putting us on this path since they didn’t know any better. But governments of the last 20 years have absolutely no excuse for not correcting this error. An error only becomes a mistake if you fail to correct it. Our federal government continues to make the same mistake but if we put people first then the mistake would be there for everyone to see.
If the issues mentioned here are carefully considered and acted upon then the vision I have of Australia will be realised. My vision of Australia is a place where ALL citizens are safe, healthy and educated. A place where all people are able to participate in and contribute to their local community, a place where our natural environment is treasured and its leaders put people before profit.
