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While it is said we read to know we are not alone, it is also true that libraries and bookstores are communal places, providing a safe environment for all and filling vital, societal roles. Of all my interactions over the years with readers, customers and library patrons, two instances remain strong in my memory.
Now that the royal commission hearings have finished, people are asking whether things will change. There are grounds for both cautious hope and pessimism. Hope is based on the expectation that the exposure of greed, complacency and lassitude in institutions, boards and regulators will lead them to hunger for a better reputation.
The problem goes much deeper than a few crooked operatives and it will not be fixed by changing the corporate 'culture'. The fundamental evil is the arithmetic of compound interest. Interest on debt rises exponentially, while economic activity is linear. That means that sooner or later those in a weaker position are unable to pay.
What is so urgent here is not a sense of being morbid. Nor, in the main, was there even a vengeful note. This was unalloyed grief, unimpaired by manipulation and political exploitation.
So here is a question. Which are you? A customer, a shareholder, a worker, a citizen, or, well, a whole human being? If you answered 'customer' then congratulations, you are in line with contemporary economic orthodoxy, and boy, have we got a society for you. If you answered 'a human being' then that really is a problem, I'm afraid.
It is all too easy to make daily choices that negatively affect the environment, and there are many incentives for us to do so — cost, time, social norms. This is where policies like plastic bag bans come in — they change the incentives and not only help us to do the right thing but also to normalise it within our culture.
'I voted 'yes' in last year's ABS survey on same sex marriage. As a priest, I was prepared to explain why I was voting 'yes' during the campaign. I voted 'yes', in part because I thought that the outcome was inevitable. But also, I thought that full civil recognition of such relationships was an idea whose time had come.' — Frank Brennan, 2018 Castan Centre Human Rights Conference
We can speculate on the reasons for the recent rage against plastic bag bans. We don't like change. We don't like being told what to do. We don't like having to think about alternatives and solutions. But at the heart of it, being mad about this particular inconvenience is about refusing to accept one's part in improving the collective lot. This is the one planet we have. There is no Plan B.
Yiayia Aphrodite always practised frugality. She cut old dresses into strips and wove cotton rugs out of them, and used matches twice if she could. When plastic bags came into supermarkets, she immediately made use of them: I think every house in the neighbourhood received presents of circular blue and orange bathmats and doormats.
Think also of you, my father, tending to aircraft engines, or helping out on black-market runs in small cargo planes ... No action as such, though early in the war you crossed submarine-haunted seas on a troop ship, and patrolled a jungle aerodrome ...
Some quick research can reveal whether a company has a good track record with LGBTI and other human rights. Do they donate to LGBTI charities? Do they have an inclusion and diversity policy on their website? It doesn't benefit equality in the long run if we allow businesses to brand themselves pro-same sex marriage when their support for human rights runs only as deep as a rainbow poster.
To get a good idea of where employment practices are headed, a good place to start is the music industry. Musicians have been the canary in the coalmine. The gradual removal of their work place rights, and even basic remuneration, points to what happens when there are no effective constraints on employers’ behaviour. Instead, they are being offered ‘exposure’—and, as one muso quips, ‘you can die of exposure.’