Maybe I’m a humanist — and that’s a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art and motivated by compassion.
Our initiative, our intuition, our humanity and our essence of being kind and thoughtful people has been hijacked by an economic system that supports and prefers values and ideals that are contrary to our broader and, beyond that, intimate wellbeing, and our instincts.
Ever since I was young, it has been clear that together we will go far; alone we soon falter, trip and fall.
Evidence of the power of ‘public everything’ abounds from modern history.
The state- (public) funded rail system was central to the development of Australia, with the impact particularly felt in regional areas such as the Goulburn Valley.
The railways provided steady work, primarily for men, allowing them to approach banks with evidence of a steady and reliable income, enabling them to start businesses and borrow to build homes.
Many regional towns flourished when their futures were linked to the strength and resilience of public wealth.
I weep as I watch our present poorly funded rail network deteriorate and be dismantled, piece by piece.
It was the breadth and depth of public money that allowed America to put a man on the moon; the world wide web, commonly known as the internet, and without which the world’s economy and businesses would flounder, was made possible through risk-taking using public money; Apple, which has been until recently the most valuable company in the world, with its worth measured in trillions of dollars, owes much of its success to ideas that came from the public realm; and today, August 22, is another day of celebration for those who recognise and acknowledge ‘public everything’, as it was today in 1872 that construction of the Overland Telegraph line between Adelaide and Darwin was completed.
It has been described as ‘the greatest engineering feat carried out in nineteenth century Australia’; a feat only made possible when backed and funded by the public.
Of course, the sadder aspects of our behaviours were also made possible when we combined our efforts to ignite the various wars that have plagued humanity.
And while the public has been funding these catastrophes, privatised businesses have been lurking in the background, mopping up the profits.
It was mid last century that the architects of our existing economic system began laying the foundations of an idea that is contrary to our wellbeing in that it celebrates individualism and heaps scorn on ‘public anything’.
Those who govern us, our politicians, should have their names drawn out of hat — it’s called sortition, and the outcome would be no worse than what exists, particularly considering recent events surrounding our immediate past Prime Minister.
As a 16-year-old I stumbled into reporting and so began a career that to my surprise fitted perfectly with personal proclivities — reporting, I found, was about drawing stories out of people to hear more of their role in community — it was about ‘public everything’.
Our economic system is, in my view, another country; a country with an impenetrable language, where admission is open only to those with the appropriate passport and entry is limited to those who willingly bury what is best about humanity and stand with those who worship wealth.
Facts, I know, carry no weight in any argument, but despite that they are often worth repeating:
Just a handful of people in the world, and that is less than one per cent, control half the world’s wealth; Oxfam reports that the world’s less than 3000 billionaires watched as their wealth grew extraordinarily during the COVID-19 crisis, while millions of people either lost their jobs or fell deeper into poverty.
That massive inequality is an indictment upon all of us and yet we can put all to right with just one visit to the voting booth — yes, vote for decency.
The suicide rate of former military people has crowded our news services of late and as someone opposed to any sort of violence, I see the solution in simple terms: don’t send them in the first place.
Prepare for war and that becomes your destination; prepare for peace and that will be your reality.
The individualism championed by existing economics brought privatisation and its menagerie of promises, among them ease, comfort and, of course, cheaper everything — all of which are as yet largely unrealised assurances.
Contrary to those undertakings, most things have become more complex, confusing, unsettling and simply more expensive, and what we have really seen in this new paradigm is the privatisation of profits and socialisation of costs.
The complexity of what exists gives us inequality at an industrial scale; an inequality that breeds distrust, and those without a passport to this foreign country are often simply described as malingerers.
Australia is among the world’s richest of countries in humanity’s richest ever moment, and with a change in mindset we could solve, in a moment, the homelessness that plaques the country; we could end poverty, as we could easily pay a universal basic income; we could easily set up a free national healthcare system; free education and the provision of energy and transport at almost no cost.
Money is not the problem, rather all that stands between the somewhat existing severe individualist world and the nirvana of ‘public everything’ is adherence to a failed ideology and the will to make the change.
And after all, you and I made all these rules, we built this individualist world that has given us many things, among them climate change, and mental health troubles brought on by an economic system that favours only a few, and so, yes, we can change everything and make this a kind place; a kind place that cares about people, rather than things, and of course all those other lifeforms that make our lives both possible and pleasant.
I’ll leave the final word to Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney Jess Scully, who wrote in her book Glimpses of Utopia:
“The democratic process now feels skewed to favour a fortunate few at the expense of everyone and everything else, even the viability of life itself on our one and only planet.”
