Sunday 24th of November 2024
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country of despair .....

‘What I am arguing tonight is that our country is afflicted with a blindness that needs urgent repair given the magnitude of the problems now staring us in the eye.

By the end of the current bushfire season, I doubt many Australians will question the fact of climate change.

I am also arguing that this government can no longer claim to represent all Australians. It formally surrendered that claim, and also its claim to moral authority on the issue of our national values, when it appointed Keith Windschuttle to the board of the ABC.

I am not going to discuss Windschuttle further tonight beyond saying that I have spent most of my adult life studying Tasmanian history and the view he ultimately gives of the native people of that island, particularly their connection to what Aboriginal people call country, which he trivialises, is simply wrong. But it is not merely wrong; it is mean, and in a horrible way, since it denies the source of their meaning as human beings; what others might call their spirit or their soul. Seizing upon Windschuttle as an ally in their ideological war, the government rewarded him with a medal for his services to Australian history and then appointed him to the board of the ABC.  

If I succeed in doing one thing tonight, I hope it is to persuade at least some of you that the ABC must be defended. We have a government that could happily survive on a media comprised of talk-back radio hosts and tabloid newspaper columnists, but what we don’t have in that event is a future in a world where, as a nation, we will have to think strategically and wisely.’

The Fight For The Other Australia

Make me rich — owe me...

From our ABC

Australia 'better off' with large foreign debt
A Queensland economist says Australia's expanding $500 billion foreign debt is boosting national income.

Griffith University economist Tony Makin says the national debt has been put to good use by helping to expand productive capital stock.

Professor Makin says foreign investment has generated billions of dollars over the past decade.

"The servicing costs on the foreign debt is less than the extra product that it generates, so that's making us better off," he said.

"The capital inflow over the past 10 years has generated about an extra $25 billion worth of national income."

He says Australia's foreign debt is now approaching the $500 billion mark due to high current account deficits over recent years.

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Gus: This is typical of the "growth" and "expansionist" industry. I have seem many a rich man advocate debt (mostly for others) as a form of "wealth". Some are dead, some are rich, some went to prison. But the truth is that not all people have the ability nor the gall to borrow money to such an extend as to create more wealth — an activity that becomes very susceptible to the will and fancy of those who lend the money to you, or of what you do with it... An increase of a quarter of a percentage point, an illness, overseas speculators can destroy the stack of cards before one can "consolidate", which often means finding someone who is ready to buy what you have for more that you've spent, whether you sell in small bits or as a job lot. A lot of BS is needed to to spruik the talk, or you go to chapter eleven. The stack of debt is fragile, only firmed by the knowledge by creditors they can call on the money owed without killing the goose as a situation become desperate.

The main purpose here of "debt confidence" (trick?) is to entice the average punter to borrow to the point at which the punter has to carry on working harder to service the debt that is simply designed to make creditors rich, with an illusion of better-off added.

Debt is the least natural of our produce. Debt should be the option of penultimate resort, when there are only one alternative left to move. As a last resort, debt will become a bigger burden that can be imagined. As a first option, debt can excitingly provide opportunities that have less chance to work than a pipe-dream, will hide oncoming drought and will become a burden on the future.

In fact debt is carried off by items that do not enter economists' equations properly, if ever... such as population increase beyond sustainability, irreparable massive environmental damages, including loss of heritage and global warming. Buy now pay later. The price will spiral up.

The question here is can we improve things without going into debt that is damaging the environment? The answer is...

I cannot forget the little grocer arguing in the early 1990s that PM Keating was driving Australia into debt (a very small debt indeed) while he himself, our unAustralian grocer-in-chief, supervised a national debt that has become more than half the federal budget... Welcome to double standards.

consumption, fuelled by debt...

From the BBC [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6077798.stm|Global ecosystems 'face collapse']

Current global consumption levels could result in a large-scale ecosystem collapse by the middle of the century, environmental group WWF has warned.
The group's biannual Living Planet Report said the natural world was being degraded "at a rate unprecedented in human history".
Terrestrial species had declined by 31% between 1970-2003, the findings showed. It warned that if demand continued at the current rate, two planets would be needed to meet global demand by 2050.