The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy)
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
So, you were hoping for a new pair of boots, made in Australia, for your birthday this year were you? Good luck with that.
Whenever I hear Peter Costello or Ian MacFarlane talking about jobs and the Australian economy I am reminded of the story of the Cricket and the Grasshopper. Remember that one? The Grasshopper laughs and plays his way through the summer (quite a few grasshoppers doing that on this farm, I can tell you). Eat drink and be merry is his attitude. He laughs at the Cricket who has no fun while he works hard storing food for the winter in a snug nest. When winter comes of course the Cricket survives and the Grasshopper, who didn't plan for the future, perishes.
The federal government has turned Australia into a Grasshopper economy. Doesn't matter about all these companies (most recently Blundstones) outsourcing or completely shifting operations overseas - the unemployment rate is low so plenty more jobs if you get sacked; profits rising, companies doing well. You hear Macfarlane saying this, in all seriousness, and you don't know whether to laugh or cry. Does he really not understand that it is in Australia's interests to maintain skills and manufacturing capacity across the board? Is he so blinded by ideology that he thinks that jobs in the service industries, in retail, catering, IT, media and entertainment, advertising, tourism, are all Australia needs in the 21st century? If so, he is playing, like the grasshopper, in the warm sun of high resource prices and plenty of tourists, what happens when the prices collapse and winter comes and the tourists don't?
And what about climate change? Does he really not understand that we are going to need people trained in science and technology, in agriculture, in bushfire control, in water use, in solar power and new transport technology, in weed and pest control, in disease management, in fisheries recovery management, in soil science, in developing homes and cities that are energy efficient? Does he really think that we won't need people who can make shoes, and clothes, and medicines, and hybrid cars, and computers, and canned food, that in fact we may well need to become self sufficient as climate change disrupts populations and trade across the world? Does he not realise that being self-sufficient, even in food, is going to be extremely difficult? We are in for a very hard ride in the 21st century, thanks to government inaction on global warming. The least they could do is to try to retain skills in manufacturing, science and technology instead of cheerfully waving goodbye to any company that puts dirt cheap labour and profits ahead of the well-being of the country. Come on Mr Macfarlane, put your rigid ideology and kooky policies to one side and start thinking about the future of this country. We need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, starting yesterday. Cricket boots.
"You are a person of some interest,one comes to you and takes strange gain away." (Pound)
"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world." (Keats)
"nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Keats)