In the last fortnight or so the climate of public life in Australia has changed. After the wintertime of isolation, acquiescence and solidarity, now there are rumours of vernal pastures for individual planting, reaping and profit taking.
Visions of profit and plenty for us and trickle down for others abound. Miners want hand-outs; football clubs want license to play their close contact games; big business wants to be able to move its pawns around the chessboard at will; groups hard hit by the virus and economic recession want support; tourist resorts want encouragement for visitors. We all have a vision of a better society and want it implemented for the benefit of people like us, and sometimes of people unlike us.
For comfortable communitarians among us it is tempting to lament the loss of the solidarity displayed in the first response to coronavirus. That would be a mistake.
Solidarity is not a mood to be looked back on with nostalgia, but a commitment to be built and defended. Nor is the noisy spruiking of a myriad of claims for priority and support during the recovery to be lamented. It should be welcomed as a natural response to testing times of great need. It expresses the necessary involvement of the community in the recognition and choice of directions to be taken.
The challenge in the recovery, as it was during the initial crisis, will be to ensure that as a society we have a reliable compass to guide us as we make our own proposals, as we hear the claims of others, and as we adjudicate their merits and their relative priority. The true north to which the compass is adjusted must be the common good of the whole society, and particularly of people most disadvantaged. The adjustment incorporates the principle that each person is precious because they are human, not because they contribute to the GDP.
It is the responsibility of society as a whole and of each of its citizens to accept these compass settings, and of government to commend them and to ensure that they guide all its own processes of planning, consulting, evaluating and administering. That is what solidarity means.
'Governments must hear both noisy and quiet Australians.'
In the abstract that may seem straightforward. But it presupposes a high level of acceptance at every level of society. It supposes, for example, that we all assume the good faith of people who argue for the importance of their own cause and interests in the recovery. It supposes that we are prepared to listen to those with whom we constitutionally or habitually disagree without dismissing them because of their associations. This openness and impartiality must also be present and displayed in all the committees, decision making body and ministerial decisions. Favoured persons should not receive a favoured hearing nor be brought in to oversee the hearing of others.
If we are confident that the good of all within the community will guide decision making, we shall tolerate, even welcome, noise and debate, but also be resolute in insisting that the strongest and noisiest do not drown out the less articulate. Governments must hear both noisy and quiet Australians.
This demands that persons responsible for adjudicating proposals made for recovery from the virus must hold that the economy is subservient to the common good and does not define it. They must also appreciate the human context out of which proposals are made — will seek to know interiorly, for example, what the life and relationships of Indigenous persons in a remote community are like, when discussing proposals that involve their communities.
This high level of respect is not to be taken for granted. We have been encouraged to see it exemplified in many of the actions taken by national and state leaders, as well as in the care for strangers shown by so many people when responding to COVID-19.
On the other hand, we also recognise that the gross sense of entitlement in the use of public funds embodied in the sports rorts affair remains unrepented of. The reflex search for enemies whose deep dyed evil will turn us and our own narrow self-interest into shining models of purity, too, is also picking up strength. Such things engender disrespect, and distract from the common good.
All this is to say that solidarity in commitment to the common good is not to be taken for granted. It must be believed in, practiced, commended and struggled for. The stakes are clear and the time is right.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.
Main image: Girl helping boy up (Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash)