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No doubt there were some who genuinely believed that privatising employment services would result in better services at a lower cost to the public purse. But the engineers of the socially destructive projects of the neoliberal era knew very well that they were more likely to result in the enrichment of some to the detriment of many.
As demonstrated in debates around the Voice, increasingly divergent perceptions of reality affect our dedication to our societal obligations and the upkeep of our shared core values. If left unchecked, this drift away from a shared understanding of the common good will further undermine trust and mutual respect that bind us, challenging the very foundations of a humane, civilised and inclusive society.
Beyond the announcement of the corona supplement falling from $550 to $250 a fortnight in September, and the reintroduction of asset testing, there has been little in the way of a roadmap for our nation’s unemployed in a landscape where job seekers outnumber jobs 13:1.
As we pare back more and more, I have started to realise that there is a risk in taking things too far. The consumer orgy of the past may have been unsightly, but gift giving itself also serves a valuable social function, and we may be at risk of throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Australia’s income support system and employment services have shifted to an ever harsher regime of compliance and penalty, while failing to find work for hundreds of thousands of people.
The system that keeps Aboriginal cultural autonomy oppressed calls itself representative democracy, yet our voices remain unheard. Seeing the royal couple prioritise our own land conservation more than the Australian government does is the ultimate example of how disrespected and politically powerless we are.
Perhaps we couldn't care less about what happens to an au pair or the person who let her in. But to know that there is rot in the ceiling — embodied in relationships of mutual benefit between those in office and those with money — and still be fine retiring to bed underneath, does not really bode well for anyone.
The ongoing talk of war with North Korea and the threat of nuclear weapons has everybody dusting off their copies of Dr Strangelove and rewatching that classic black farce of innuendo, misunderstanding and paranoia in an age of Mutually Assured Destruction.
In an otherwise sombre start to the year Barack Obama's final speech has been a shining light. He celebrated what he saw as the successes of his administration without sneering at his political opponents. He spoke graciously and decently, and evoked hope for the future. Obama is right in insisting that empathy is the necessary starting point for reconstructing a broken economic framework. It enables a global perspective from which the good of individuals and groups is set within the flourishing of the whole community, and especially the most disadvantaged.
The United Nations Security Council is in the process of selecting its next secretary-general. There is intense interest, not least because the General Assembly has made efforts to make it more transparent via an open nomination process and televised debates. The UN is seen in some parts as an edifice to bureaucratic ineptitude. But the internationalism that stitched the world back together after two calamitous wars has frayed. We need the UN as ballast against future instability.
If you want to form government in Australia and if you want to lead the Australian people to be more generous, making more places available for refugees to resettle permanently in Australia, you first have to stop the boats. If you want to restore some equity to the means of choosing only some tens of thousands of refugees per annum for permanent residence in Australia from the tens of millions of people displaced in the world, you need to secure the borders. The untrendy truth is that not all asylum seekers have the right to enter Australia but that those who are in direct flight from persecution whether that be in Sri Lanka or Indonesia do, and that it is possible fairly readily (and even on the high seas) to draw a distinction between those in direct flight and those engaged in secondary movement understandably dissatisfied with the level of protection and the transparency of processing in transit countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. The popular evil is that political
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