Writings

Gordon Drennan's Vision

Like all good Labor PMs, K-Rudd is hosting a Summit.  But not everyone's a fan of summits, it seems.  Here's Mr Gordon Drennan of Burton (near Salisbury North) in SA in the 'Letters' page of the Age today (4 Feb):

PM without vision

        KEVIN Rudd's calling of a summit of 1000 chosen people to solve Australia's worst problems confirms the impression he gave during the election campaign: that he is a bureaucrat and a (micro)manager, not a leader with a vision of his own.

        We can only hope he listens to what Albert Einstein said, that "we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them". It would be a huge mistake to think that a summit of experts in the various fields will produce anything new or any real solutions. Those will come from people who are able to think outside the box.

        Gordon Drennan, Burton, SA

        There are some wise words in there.  Einstein's insight is particularly good.  But I'm not sure how Mr Drennan of Burton (near Salisbury North) is able to conclude that K-Rudd's summit "confirms" his (micro)managerialism.  Does Mr Drennan know who is on the guest list?  I think it's perhaps a little premature to be making such judgements - we should at least wait until Gerard Henderson and Lynne Kosky are confirmed as Summittees before denouncing the whole thing.

        What evidence (other than bitter experience) is there to say conclusively that this Rudd Summit is not simply the tool he'll use to legitimise his own program of progressive modernisation (the program he couldn't outline during the election campaign because it would have presented a target for Howard, whose concern for the Common Good went as far as winning himself another election)?

        (Mr Drennan shouldn't need reminding that General Soeharto had "vision", but apart from that minority which benefited from his tyranny, and Paul Keating, there are few who would call him a good leader.  Other "visionaries" in modern history include Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tsu-Tung - fairly universally regarded as occupying a place somewhere on the "undesirable" end of the leadership spectrum; Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi - generally regarded as reasonably inspirational, though I recognise the Right's terrorist/freedom fighter dilemma re the African; and Margaret 'TINA' Thatcher, whose Poll Tax was certainly "visionary", if more than mildly balmy.)

        What Mr Drennan appears to be advocating is a form of "democracy" in which the "masses" engage once every few years by voting in short-term autocrats who go about implementing their "visions" before enough people get sick of them and vote them out.

        I, for one, believe political democracy means more than this.

        One of the major problems with the previous administration is that it repeatedly ignored the advice of experts, researchers, scientists and thinkers, preferring to fall back on its own "vision" - which, as far as I can work out, consisted of a nation of culturally homogeneous Norms who would work 60 hours a week on short-term contracts and in their spare time pay homage to The Don (the cricketer, not the administrator) and Simpson (the donkey-riding Aussie, not the British unionist).

        Please, Mr Drennan, after 11 years of prosperous nastiness, let me wear my $15 Kevin07 T-shirt in idealistic peace, at least until the red-and-blue fades to a dull neoliberal grey.

        Sincerely,

        RM.

Cricket's Problems

Harbhajan's Suspension

Glowing Green

I'm no expert on nuclear physics, so I remain entirely confused as to how the Prime Minister and other proponents of nuclear energy can honestly describe it as "clean and green".  The generation of nuclear power may not, by itself, produce carbon emissions, but it does produce radioactive waste that has a half-life.  Further, one of the major problems of fossil fuel energy - that it is derived from finite amounts of material extracted from the earth - is hardly solved by "going nuclear".  It is true that there may be benefits to nuclear power over fossil fuels - but surely to focus exclusively on the benefits while ignoring the obvious costs is to reject a lesson already painfully learned many times over.

Radioactively,

RM.

Hanif's Law

The case of Hanif Mohammed (which involves prolonged detention without charge, and the withholding from the defendant of evidence prejudicial to him) clearly demonstrates the incremental dismantling of that great liberal ordering principle, the Rule of Law.  Such a rule encourages trust and social cohesion, by allowing us to know basic things about strangers before we meet them: their rights and their responsibilities, for example, which are the same as our own. 

Yet while dismantling that which promotes trust, our government is at the same time installing a new ordering principle in its place: the Rule of Competition, contained within devices like WorkChoices, which promotes the idea that we’re all individuals competing with everyone else for the scarce fruits of society.  Such a rule promotes mistrust, fear and ignorance. 

If what the ‘terrorists’ hate about ‘us’ is ‘our’ liberalism, tolerance and democracy – and such erroneous claims are made often enough in newspaper editorials and by political leaders – then we can start relaxing soon: as WorkChoices replaces the Rule of Law as an ordering principle, such despised values will evaporate faster than our cities’ water supplies.

Anti-neoliberally,

RM.

Curtains on Prosperity

Extolling the Virtues of Choice