Promises

Storing up trouble

 Acknowledgement for Alexsander  to Darren Walsh at Passion Pictures

You can fool some of the people all of the time, andall of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)

The current federal government appears to be heading for difficult times ahead. While it's true  that unpopular measures are passed in its early days hoping for a rebound prior to the next election, the current majority in Canberra seem determined to undermine public trust and confidence.

Cuts to education and welfare arts and broadcasting,  new /old tax increases and new costs as well as attempts to grab back listed heritage areas,  are all in the offing. The government has yet to get many of theses measures  through. While the  apparent success of halting asylum seekers or boat people seems to have been well accepted , there is a lingering sense of "something not quite right" in the state of Australia, particularly when compared to other civilised democracies.The current strategy of including Cambodia to our list of havens for "unwanted" people is a bit chilling. Cynicism abounds. To add to the mix our Attorney General  sees nothing wrong with rednecks being bigots.

In the past, our sights and goals were fixed firmly on betterment of living standards, the practice of democracy ,in deeds not just words,  and the  improvement in living conditions for the poorer, less fortunate countries of the world. Through globalisation of economies and trade agreements etc we were hopefully going to lift each other by the bootstraps and reach a sort of economic Nirvana. 

What appears to have been achieved, trying to achieve this, is an ever  increasing population,  thanks to higher medical standards, better economic conditions: with all of this  however we are faced with the problems of how to deal with the new reality. It appears that we set our targets without envisaging the consequences and then try to fix the problems by applying methods that are outmoded and hard to enforce.

One can’t help but get the impression that our current Prime Minister promised everything and kept his cards very close to his chest when electioneering. Cuts to welfare programs as well as  increased taxation and costs in other areas are being introduced and mooted on a regular basis. 

This in itself is not a problem, apart from the pain it imposes, but it leads to cynicism and disbelief in our current leaders. We continually  hear the argument that  “ we can’t have this with that” , when in fact the proponents of such an argument are really saying “ we can’t have that, only our way of thinking”.These are rather specious statements and are designed to justify a position.This is  a statement of belief; if you say something long enough and loud enough it becomes axiomatic.

It would be welcome to have, for a change, a forward looking bunch of parliamentarians who are willing to try to tackle our current problems in a way that benefits the majority not just the privileged, not only domestically but also overseas. That's where leadership lies. Probably too much to wish for.