GOVERNMENT NEEDS INNOVATION; INNOVATION NEEDS DIVERSITY

Canberra Gets On The Same Bus Every Day —

At all levels of government in Australia, leadership in sourcing innovative ideas has slid right off the radar and their feeble, phony pretense of pursuing diversity and equality isn't helping.  

Original ideas come from the original experiences of original people, supported by an environment that brims with a diversity of useful, relevant skills, backed in by diversity of genders, national cultures, economic backgrounds, skin colours, ages, and artistic expression. Perversely, the party/oppositional system of governing we've assumed as our model has proved to engender a push to Sameness in the name of “solidarity” The survival of the “government clique” has taken moral and political supremacy over the well-being of the individuals whom those governments have been elected to promote and protect.

I love energy centres like Bellingen and the Denmark and Mullumbimby areas. They are full of small artist spaces, tiny but great restaurants, small but affordable houses, some in the bush on the slopes of the giant volcano crater, and great access to an astonishing number of events ranging from music to film to workshops, celebrations, social, political and self-improvement lectures and workshops. It seems your can take in as much as you want any day of the week. There's palpable atmosphere of “can-do”, “have-a-go” and freedom from status quo.

And there's a tremendous amount of creativity everywhere from the graffiti on the walls, the quirky names on quirky stores, to the individual self-expression on the streets. That includes an un-enforced politeness and consideration between all users of the roads and pathways. Mullum, Brunswick and Byron are universities without limits. They teem with young people mixing and talking with each other. They're a massive incubator of ideas. And they offer a stark contrast to Capital Hill's homogeneous monoculture.

Frictionless living...

Australia is a vast, varied landscape with big problems and complex challenges. But where there is pain there are opportunities to find solutions that solve and salve. Successful start-ups solve tough problems. And that's where organic spaces like Mullum have every advantage over Canberra, which is designed within an inch of its life.

Politicians and their armies of minions get on the same bus every day. Each morning they stand silently on the same doorsteps waiting to be driven to their predigested campus of personal entitlement.

Every day is predictable and indistinguishable...

Every day, State and Federal jocks and their staves are insulated from the everyday experience of everyone else. Their incomes are lavish, their food is free, their haircuts are free, their snacks are free, their apartments are cleaned, their laundry is folded, and their commutes are always on time and the wifi is always fast. Life is made frictionless and painless – in a word – un-human.

Politicians create plans, gather support, solve problems and enable progress  -- well, I think that was the original idea. But if they don't see any pain in anyone who supports their privileged life, there is nothing to solve, is there? No housing for those who desperately need it, no hospital beds, no farming or fishing if a miner wants to prod, poke & dig, nothing beyond sit-down money and instant mashed potato for the original inhabitants of this land. “Fuck 'em. Get me a helicopter will you for the matchplay golf tournament this weekend on Hammy Island. Oh, and organise a pretend meeting so I an charge it to Expenses.” This is why Government at any level is running out of original ideas. All the low-hanging fruit is long gone, the obvious ideas are already done and then done again, and “bugger reaching higher – me and my dicky back. Let the crossbenchers knock themselves out; we've got the opposition onside – No change – no probs.”

How many ranks of email organisers, Cheives of Stuff, political advisers, writers, researchers, knockshop apps (in case that cute intern with the nice rack won't do what's good for her career while she's tagging along with me in Honkers this weekend) How many to-do list PA's, media coaches, spin doctors and called-in-favour hangers-on do we need? To run a country effectively, I mean? What proportion of their everyday busy-ness is spent at actually doing the job, as compared to protecting their tenure in the job and looking as if they're accomplishing something?

Original ideas require original experiences yet, following their election and the obligatory “I'm humbled” speech, pollies do their best to segregate and insulate themselves and their privately contracted creatives from the diversity found in life's daily struggles. The closest they get to real feedback is some pimply intern's report about a tick-one-of-three-boxes focus group. In the meantime, just keep the mantra going - “This is the greatest time to be an (Australian,/South Australian/foreign investor/alive”)...please tick just one, and stand in front of at least 3 Australian flags and two nodding sycophants while you say it.

In contrast, the hinterlands, away from the glossy “Home Beautiful” marinas, overflow with real people creating original experiences, experiments of every type and kind, and with a culture of diversity far more advanced than any PM's simplistic accounting of gender numbers and skin colours.

Urban centres have an advantage...

All cities have similarities to each other. In some general areas it's possible to solve a problem in one and you've solved it in every city -- that's a massive potential for progress. But no, that kind of possibility gets killed before birth by flick-passing such possibilities to isolationist State governments – the dregs of those who know they're not good enough even for Federal parliament.

Constitutional government won't go away -- it'll be there to shield from view hidden business agendas and give the players some position to fiddle with, probably at taxpayers' expense, after they “retire” on obscenely privileged superannuation. But don't expect many original start-up ideas from this self-segregated monoculture of government. And any pollie stupid enough to try it will be crucified. Remember Gough; remember Brian Burke? Remember Don Dunstan?

Innovation is born amidst adversity and is driven by diversity. Governments lack both.