darragh murray

The people of Australia have been inundated with political campaigning over the last few months, and no doubt many people are sick of the constant mud-slinging and negativity that seems to go hand in hand with a federal election campaign – “It’s not about electing the best leader, but about keeping the worse one out” seems to be the theme of Australian federal politics over the last ten years. Consequently, Australia has seemed to have lived in a cultural and stagnation which goes hand in hand with conservative governments like the Howard regime. While you could probably guess where my political ideals are situated by comments like the ones preceding this sentence, I’d like to list a few items that matter to the educated 20 something male, like myself.

• The economy and the state of the economy, to someone who is not an economist, is not a primary issue. Granted, I do not own a home, nor have children, nor married or have such responsibilities. The coalition have promoted themselves as the most able ‘money managers’, but do not believe that it is the case, rather other external factors including the resources boom (including the ‘boom and bust’ cycle that seems to occur).
• Ratifying Kyoto should not be about how it works, or should work, in practice, but should be done on a principle basis. Not that I know the intricate reasons behind not signing the agreement, it seems Howard’s argument is that Kyoto is meaningless without having nations like China and the United States as signatories. The fact is, Kyoto, for all its alleged flaws, is a necessary step in the correct direction. It validates a change of mindset ‘Yes, I am concerned about climate change, and I recognise this as an initial step in a long process of change’. Howard says the protocol will cost jobs. How many jobs will be lost if the environment starts to fail? We must make short term sacrifices for the long term gain in relation to the environment.

  A slight aside: A comment by a reader of John Quiggin’s blog, called ‘Ikonoclast’. on cultures wars in Australia, caught my eye and think it makes an excellent point regarding capitalism and it’s effect on the environment.

  The main culture war in the last 200 years or so has been Capitalism versus everbody, every ‘ism’ and every thing else. And to put it bluntly, Capitalism has won hands down and swept all else from the field. OK, OK there’s still a bit of residual sweeping going on but it’s basically all over on that front.

  This does not mean however that history is over. We are about to find out that endless-growth Capitalism’s inherent contradiction is not to be diagnosed by any historicist dialectic but by looking at its impact on the environment. Capitalism’s victory (it its current form) is entirely pyrrhic. The environment’s capacity to sustain a capitalist world civilization (in its current form) is about to collapse.

• Education, particularly tertiary education. The Howard government has done nothing but erode the status of tertiary education in this country. Student costs have gone up, the arts have suffered through not enough support for academics, Voluntary Student Unionism has hamstrung most of the positive things about being at university (I particularly acknowledge the stresses the UQ Boxing Club, which I am the president of, has undergone under VSU, it wasn’t actually until I got involved that I realised what good those funds do in the university community, and how little the university themselves actually contribute to preserving ‘campus culture’).
• ‘Work Choices’ is simply a euphemism for destroying the rights of workers. It is funny how the term implies choice, but in reality it seems (at least by what is reported in the mass media) that there is little choice involved. This moronic and nineteenth-century system has to go.

Frankly, I’m getting a bit sick of the mudslinging advertising tactics between the major parties. The coalition keep promoting this anti-union agenda which goes to show that they are well past their used by date. Anti-unionism is not a defining issue of my generation and it something that seems totally abstracted from pertinent issues in society. Furthermore, John Howard retiring midway through his next term is a ludicrous tactic. Howard is assuming that people actually like Peter Costello. I could not think of a worse leader (actually, I can, I don’t think I could live in a country with a person like Tony Abbott or Phillip Ruddock as prime minister).

Anyway, that’s just a few words from me regarding the state of the election. God help the left on Saturday.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 19th, 2007 at 10:41 am and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.