Plato rules – OK?

To clarify my position: I can criticise without hating – it’s the idea I’m attacking, not the person. Even if the person is rich and famous and I’m not.

I can’t help noticing that most of our guardians, including the journalist in question, profit handsomely from their position. I don’t see too many of them who have retained the common touch, and understand what it is like to enjoy a less luxurious lifestyle. ‘Poverty is the curse of the working class, and who can blame us for choosing to pursue a less Spartan way of life?’

Many societies didn’t go along with Plato. The Celts for example, believed that people who claimed to be guardians should be put to death, but I don’t wish that on anyone.

Australians are famous for disrespecting their ‘leaders’, and that’s part of our culture that I quite like. Our guardians call that the ‘tall poppy syndrome’, inferring that it’s the followers who are at fault, but I see it as a tendency to test the claims of the guardians, and to act with a certain degree of contempt if they fail to come up to scratch.

There is a better way. Aristotle didn’t agree with Plato, and was of the opinion that maybe good could come out of consensus. Maybe that’s not exactly the way he put it, but I think it’s what he meant.

The natural outcome of the guardian mentality is our adversarial way of living, as the guardians argue, not about what is right, but about who is right. The result is usually compromise, which they like to call consensus, but isn’t.

To clarify: If ‘A’ comes up with the perfect solution, ‘B’, being in opposition, sees it as a duty to oppose it. The perfect idea is abandoned altogether, or they compromise. That’s our adversarial system. We always get second best.

Consensus is when all parties agree to support a solution, even if they don’t totally agree with it. It results from committing to a vision of the future, rather than recriminations and posturing. Very disempowering for guardians!

Impossible? Definitely not!

In July 1994 Prime Minister Paul Keating, launching the Great Barrier Reef Strategic Plan, said: “It is [the] need for protection and ecologically sustainable management of the reef that prompted the Great Barrier Reef Strategic Plan. The plan itself is an achievement unique in the world…It represents an ambitious and farsighted effort to develop a long term vision…by formulating appropriate objectives and management strategies for ecologically sustainable development. Creating the plan involved a comprehensive consultative process in which more than 60 peak organisations and representatives from across a wide cross section of the community participated. An independent chairperson was employed to ensure that competing interests were considered and to facilitate the joint decision making process…”

The task of creating this consensual approach was given to Sydney consultant Kayt Raymond. Imagine being able to bring together 60 disparate organisations, each, no doubt, with their own ‘guardians’. They represented local councils, Aboriginal groups, scientists, universities, tourist industries, politicians, fishermen and so on – to produce any level of agreement would seem impossible. But consensus was achieved, and the strategic plan for the reef adopted.

How that was achieved is another story – the point is that it can be done, and we know how to do it. The first stage is getting the guardians to sit down and shut up.