CLEANOUT TIME ON CAPITAL HILL

CLEANOUT TIME ON CAPITAL HILL

DOUBLE DISSDOLUTION = OPPORTUNITY

When politicians, by their actions and inactions, spurn the aspirations of their young people and make a vague promise that the goodies they mete out to others will 'trickle down” to them, they are effectively slamming the door in the face of us all.

Even in jest, the Prime Minister of this country telling kids who want a leg up to “get a rich parent” betrays the response of a man with about as much compassion for his countrymen as Marie Antoinette had for her husband's. He just doesn't get it, and what young people who want to get a leg up are getting is something that is trickling down the leg from above, and it is, frankly, rather disgusting.

Politicians should not be surprised when those who are disaffected push back in irrational ways and in unrelated areas that scream of unexpressed frustration, anger and despair.

It is long past time we stopped chanting about “pride in our youth” and started respecting and engaging them directly as people to be proud of. Stop trotting out a few of them in dayglo vests to genuflect in photo opportunities, and pose in selfies that they'll forget wihin 24 hours. Instead, put someone invested with some clout and a required performance target at an executive planning table and start involving them in shopfront enterprises that empower them to DIY.

I've been part of and, later, worked with young people for most of my working and playing life. And lately I watch in some awe at their participation in programmes like “Q & A” I find young people, in general, to be faster and more agile than us in acquiring and processing information, knowledge and wisdom, not the least I suppose because they have grown up with cultural changes, information, tools. techniques and technologies that we simply didn't have access to “in our day”. I would think that a smart politician, if indeed one exists, would really want to entrust them with driving our country to new areas and levels of growth and development.

The United Arab Emirates has appointed a cabinet minister of their age and empowered a special council of youth (not “for”) youth. Courageous? Maybe even dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as leaving the puppets of establishment power groups to run the show unfettered any longer.

Yet the media are still fascinated with their Two-Party-Preferred graphs marking the slowgress of two bloated, tired, anachronistic parties giving an exhibition match of Hopp-Bumpo around the middle ground, playing at skin-deep cosmetic touches while maintaining a status quo and ignoring less conservative and less anglo-judeo-christian members of society. Look at how recent changes to the Senate voting system were rushed in by the “parties” to cut down on the variety of unaligned opinion and make it easier to get their laws rubber-stamped with a minimum of fuss. Party hacks = Good; Crossbench = Bad. The charade is disenfranchising and marginalising agents of change, sources of other perspectives and renewal and the possibility of evolution. We're likely now to get even more and more of the same old same-old. It's clearly not working. Our most strident “representatives” are so obviously out of touch it would be funny if it was a scene out of “Utopia” – but it isn't. This is what passes for representative government in these “exciting times”. How anyone could stand there and utter such inane nonsense without bursting into laughter betrays the entrenchment of a political class that rivals Robert Mugabe and his cronies for out-of-touchness.

It's my experience that most of my friends and acquaintances, like me, are pedalling like hell, uphill and against a headwind while an elite (including our politicians) are getting an easy ride in the back seat to a swish retirement in climes that you and I can only dream about.

Australian politicians of the Coalition, Labor and the Greens are unabashedly creating and leveraging separation and divisiveness to control everything for their own ends. In a way, they can't be entirely to blame for that because the system our anglo forefathers adopted to govern this country was copied from a historically embedded adversarial system of working out “what's best”. Well, it doesn't work. We're alone on an island here – an island that's not even ours by birthright anyway. It's “Lord of the Flies” being played for real, all so that individual and sectional outbursts of frustration and rage can be used to say “See? We told you those bastards would do this! You need us to save you from “them” and their evil.” What really pisses me off is that we now have a large enough population of morons who believe it, and drip-fed layabouts who just don't want to be bothered.

And if you think this all happened by accident, you need a bloody good wake-up!

We have to cleanse the stables of these political hacks. Fortunately the job has been made easier – in a master-stroke of stupidity, Turnbull has made it easier by giving everyone, including himself, the sack. It's a game of bluff – Turnbull style.

Let's call his bluff.

Let's put out for representatives and senators with a proven record in the wider world outside of politics in studying, practicing and teaching tolerance and co-operation. Then let's give these people the responsibility for instilling tolerance into committed parents, thus creating in the home a culture of inclusiveness. Empower them to create rewards for successful parents and incentives for those who don't lift their game.

Getting back to the UAE – they have created a Minister of State for Tolerance. This person has the job of installing and administering a formalised legal framework that supports the tolerance that social groups already display. They understand that the best way to influence neighbours and newcomers is to have conscious and deliberate policies and initiatives already in place and working.

Tolerance has got to go a damn sight deeper than a focus-grouped slogan. Tolerant is something to be, not to parade. If tolerance has to be talked about, it's not there – not really. It's a way of being that each and every single one of us has to find a way of re-creating within – tolerance of what-is, tolerance of our various personal selves, tolerance of our internal contradictions, and tolerance – dare I say it – of our similarities, one to another.

Personal Tolerance cannot be legislated for and left to somehow happen by osmosis. Tolerance is created with deliberate intention – “I will be and practice Tolerance in all things until it is the ground being from which I come – so be it!”

Social Tolerance has to arise from a groundswell of desire for personal tolerance, and must be woven by leadership into the fabric of everyone's daily doings. There must be an open goal to develop and support each other in tolerance to safeguard our future and maintain the goodies we already have. Such an approach is already proven to be effective – the old, punitive jackboots-and-secrecy methods never did work for more than a few years before everything fell apart. Only the dinosaurs still believe that “one day this might work”. The take-home we have now from the “Stop the boats” approach is that we're now up a dead-end creek, condemned by the rest of the world and, with international law and at-home conscience closing in, looking for a way out that will let us save face. There is no face-saving to be had. We have been mis-led. Time to swallow righteous pride, 'fess up to our fuckup, change our minds, and apply ourselves to haling the deep wounds we have inflicted on people who deserved better – much better.

I don't see any chance now of a bright future for any of us, singly or together, without a total makeover – an intellectual, psycho-logical, spiritual and emotional reconstruction that floats in a context of openness, oneness and diversity, and an easy willingness to allow and even welcome each other's viewpoints. That isn't going to start in any caucus room or political party branch meeting.

It has already started in a communal dissatisfaction and even disgust with where the political system has now delivered us. I detect, along with disillusionment, a discernible appetite for intellectual, emotional, cultural and spiritual curiosity for “what do they know that I don't'” and “isn't there a better possibility than this”?

It's true. There has got to be something better than what we've got now.

And we've been presented with a golden opportunity to change our ways, and make amends for the damage we've done. With every lesson we learn comes a shift in perspective and perception that changes our future and, eventually, our past.

We have to start imagining and visualising what we'd like life to be like in a post-fossil fuel, post-mineral resources, environmentally aware and sensitive world. We have to do it, and do it now, because our current political leaders have disappointingly demonstrated in their so-called “plans” that they're just not up to the task. The best pictures they offer are a series of blue-sky graphs and pie charts.

The New World will need more than a Power-Point presentation. It needs a vivid and coherent story that will sweep up the less imaginative of us and join the dots so that each of us knows what it might look like, our place in it, and what we are expected to do from here on to play our part in bringing it about.

Change happens by our hands only. We don't need super-strong external powers like the Americans, the Chinese, the Japanese or the Koreans (except for K-Pop). What we need is the power we have from within to overcome the ravages of past separation, division, position and opposition, and the consequent suspicion, aversion, disgust, hatred and intolerance that we already know only too well.

I equally firmly believe that the kind of social change I'm talking about will lead to significant reductions in domestic violence, petty crimes, hooliganism, high-speed vehicle chases, car-torchings, one-punch attacks, drug addiction and youth suicides.

Maybe I'm off in la-la land, but a new direction can hardly do much more harm than the trajectory of violence and crime that we're on at the moment. I see nightly eruptions of deep unhappiness catalogued on the morning news bulletins as symptoms of a young population that is confused, frustrated and very pissed off at being left to fend for themselves on the scrapheap of materialism and self-interest that doesn't care about them one whit. Not really. Not to the extent of redressing these failures and placing an irrevocably higher priority over expediency.

Focusing on happiness and co-operation, instead of divisiveness, is both feasible and fully justified. Happiness can be measured and it can be developed and its achievement linked to material objectives. Studies have shown that happy people produce more, live longer, and drive better economic development in their communities and countries. And maybe a reduction in crimes of rage – who knows?

 The happiness of individuals, families, employers and employees, their gratitude for their upbringing, their satisfaction with their present lives and optimism for the future, are crucial to work which must cut across every sector of government. Up to this point, it just isn't happening, and the only party that may have the remotest idea of what I'm talking about right now is the Greens, but they have a long way to go still. Change always demands a leader's will and persistence to make it happen. That is why there must be a minister, fully backed by his or her leader, to guide and follow up with all government institutions (as well as provide leadership to the private sector).

 This is no time for hollow “if-I'm-elected” campaign promises. Under a new regime, candidates wishing to stand for office must be required to demonstrate a prior, effective capacity for practicing what they espouse, consistently over a period of at least 5 years in the private sector; if they're from the union or public sector – 10 years. I want to create a society where our people’s happiness is paramount, by sustaining an environment in which they can take personal responsibility for their level of contentment and truly flourish. And we can hope, too, that our formula benefits others in the region.

The formula is straightforward: national development based on core values, led by youth and focused on a future in which everyone achieves happiness.

Simple. But not easy. Commitment is called for to something larger than personal ambition.