John Linton A stunnigly beautiful late Autumn morning in Sydney with a cloudless blue sky, sun with still a hint of warmth in it and an earlier than usual, but very gentle, sea breeze shimmering the water. All is right with the world - even the coffee tastes better than usual.....but then yesterday's 'events' start flooding back and the financial press doesn't help keep the mood going and after skim reading the overseas papers it seems that not all is right with the world after all...at least in terms of making some sort of sense of what the immediate future will/may/may not bring.
As I know absolutely nothing about global or Australian politics or global or Australian economics and have less than a trivial level of knowledge of Australian business or community operating mechanics I think I'm well placed to comment on these issues. (after all knowing and sticking to proven facts and having a thorough understanding of any subject have long ceased to be any reuirement to express a view on any subject in this country).While obviously being totally bereft of any knowledge or facts about any of these issues I do have the overwhelming advantage of not having a personal aggrandisement agenda nor a requirement to keep a tiny fraction of the Australian population with their snouts in the trough and therefore any statement I make is purely what my inadequate mind and narrow experiences since living in Australia as a 'sole' immigrant' since December 1962 have brought my way.
1) There is what old age brings to each person - no, not a greater ability to laugh at the brazen lying of political fools and charlatans - the reverse. So it's inevitable that my views of all politicians, of whatever shade of red or blue they may currently be espousing, has reached the level of total contempt for their lack of ethics, education, intellectual and experiential abilities to even begin to attempt to carry out the responsibilities assigned to them in anything other than outstandingly easy times. While I may well not live much longer in this outstandingly wonderful country I am certain of one thing - that Krudd and co will continue to destroy its fabric faster than any inept bunch of fools ever given the privilege of making decisions on behalf of Australia's inhabitants has ever done in the past.
2) I regret seeing the passing of the great Australian characteristic of 'mate ship' or, if you find that word trashed by political misuse beyond redemption, easy going acceptance of almost everybody and everything with equanimity. It has been replaced via various totally misguided 'political' influences with some thing called "multiculturalism" which has replaced easy going acceptance with schisms of hatred based on weird religions and stupid cultural craziness and "long term ethnic antagonism". The 'Australianism' of the 1960s that I came to was inclusive and contained a mild expectancy that migrants (like me) would modify our views and beliefs, to over time, bring them in line with the common culture of Australia - not the other way round. I abhor what I now see, read and hear and I can assure anyone who cares to listen that it is not an 'improvement' in any way shape or form.
3) I bitterly regret that decades of mindless and unqualified economic tinkering, liberally sprinkled with "recessions we had to have", forced unionisation, forced government asset stripping and crazy financial de-regulation applied by people as crazy as Connor/Whitlam, Hawke/Keating and Howard/Costello has wrought havoc across every aspect of Australia creating the twin abominations of half the country crippled by the multigenerational welfare "supports me forever" syndrome and the other half believing "it's my right to become immensely wealthy without ever creating anything of value for anyone else in doing so".
4) I even more bitterly regret seeing what has happened to this great country that, then, had the foresight and common good view and common will of being in the final stages of completing the Snowy Mountains Scheme and the (less successful) Ord River Scheme to seeing the succeeding 40 years pass without one more cent spent on what those two major schemes addressed - Australia's chronicly worsening water supply problems - and seeing the terrible, negative results on country NSW and Victoria that looked so different when I first went there to the wasteland I see today.
I could go on but there is no point. Australia, via political misguidance on an epic scale, has become a meaner spirited, hopelessly divided and stupider country with an ever stupider population that ensures it becomes ever meaner spirited and even more divided between the time I first experienced the sheer wonderfulness of living in Australia in the working class/housing commission dominated suburb of Maroubra as a teenager to the sheer miserableness (in comprison) of living today in a State where the transport, hospitals, law and order, education systems just don't work and any chance of making them work in the future is being removed by immense borrowing to [fill in your own meaningless catch phrase] by the latest ever spiralling downward in competence federal government.
So - will the world ever be right again?
It will take a lot more that the apathy/me-me-me/multiculturalism divisiveness created by 40 years of gross mis-management of Australian's expectations of what they need to do and be to continue to enjoy what good luck, good fortune, and the work of real Australians created for them since 1788 that has been pissed away by the last two generations with the last rites being now conducted by the dumbest group of people ever to be inflicted on this poor country by itselves.
The sole contributions of the vast majority of "Australians" of the last 40 years? - either - "why isn't my government handout larger?" - or - "how do I get even more for nothing?".