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Manufacturing an Australian nation

By Georgia Lowe - posted Wednesday, 10 March 2010


I do not mean to suggest that socialism is the best or the only route to social cohesion.

It is democracy that is, first and foremost, the progenitor of a fair and united nation - a nation by its proper definition, as opposed to a state, where people are bound together only by a legal and political understanding.

But, democracy - government by the people - is not an easy thing to achieve and it is certainly not fostered in Australian society. Australia’s political and educational systems, workplaces and communities are plutocratic oligarchies, designed and implemented by detached boards and planners, with no personal stake in the end result.

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To illustrate: I recently attended a local government public lecture and workshop entitled “Inspiring Communities” which ran a lot like a church gathering. The speakers talked vaguely about the need for shared cultural experiences and for youth and creativity to be utilised, while the two people in the crowd who were aged under 20 left, uninspired, before the meeting finished.

We need to look to businesses already operating in a democratic way, as a model for how democracy should look in Australian schools, local governments and workplaces. One example is Isthmus Engineering & Manufacturing Co-op, in the US. They design and build robotics and generate revenue of $15 million per annum. Every worker in the plant has one vote and an equal say in every decision the company makes. The workers also share equally in the wealth and earnings of the company. This model of worker-owned business has increased productivity and profit for the company, as well as safety, loyalty and satisfaction in the workplace.

The Australian education system which underwent an unnoticed “revolution” last year is designed and maintained year to year without student involvement in decision-making. The National Curriculum does not include a course in civics and citizenship and therefore it alienates youth from politics and political processes, yet our Prime Minister wants to “lay down an annual challenge to young Australians to come up with their own ideas about how to mobilise young people in their communities”.

If we, like Tanzanians, look to our “society that produced us”, we soon see that Australia’s culture is somewhat vacuous. As a young state, white Australians have little to turn to but a politically spun ANZAC notion, subservience in America’s wars, genocide and sport.

It’s little surprise that the government is willing to spend $20 million for advertising agencies to come up with a new “brand” for Australia for the “Building Brand Australia” program. Trade Minister Simon Crean said of the project, “... we are calling on Australia’s best creative minds to ... redefine and enhance Australia’s global image”. The results were expected to be announced in February, but are yet to crystallise. Apparently it’s difficult to “sell” the Australian “nation”.

The problem we now face is how we shall unite our society and make it more democratic.

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Do we surrender to the polished history Prime Minister Kevin Rudd proclaimed in a speech in August last year and think of ourselves as “a democratic, prosperous and compassionate nation ... a nation that from its beginnings has etched within its soul, in fact within its DNA, an almost inalienable sense of fairness”? (Problem solved!)

Or should we accept that our state was formed on the graves of 20,000 murdered Aborigines, that our Indigenous people die almost two decades younger than the rest of us, that our gender pay gap continues to widen, that not all citizens are viewed as equals and that our once great democracy has dwindled since the suffrage and working hours movements? And then forge our own new, ideal nation, where it is workers and teachers, students and individuals who vote to shape their shared environments, and not detached and/or unelected boards?

This choice is analogous to Dorian Gray’s; shall we sell our soul for eternal youth, for history without memory, and see ourselves as flawless as Rudd would proclaim, or shall we unearth the true portrait in the attic and move forward, imperfect, but humane?

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About the Author

Georgia Lowe is a student and activist based in Sydney.

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All articles by Georgia Lowe

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