Australia's globalisation challenge

In the lead up to the 2001 Federal Election, Oxfam Community Aid Abroad will launch its Vote Global campaign and release a new book – "The Globalisation Challenge" - outlining an agenda for Australian political parties to address the challenges of globalisation at home and abroad.

Humanity has a long history of communication between diverse communities. Over many hundreds, even thousands of years, the globe has been criss-crossed by movements of people – trade, migration and invasion. What marks human development over recent decades is the increasing interconnectedness of humanity through these relationships: what we now call globalisation.

Globalisation has seen the evolution of new global rules, tools, markets and organisations. The rules include conventions and agreements setting out universal human rights standards, the conduct of world trade and environmental protection. New tools like the internet, cellular phones and global satellite-linked media networks are fuelling a dramatic increase in the global flow of information. New globally-linked foreign exchange and capital markets operate 24 hours a day, conducting business around the world in real time, and new global organisations wield unprecedented influence on ordinary people’s lives. The World Trade Organisation sets out and enforces global trading rules, while many multinational corporations wield more economic power than entire nations, and global networks of non-government organisations make connections across national boundaries.

Globalisation has also seen a dramatic change in the role of governments, particularly in poorer countries. In the past 20 years, Australians have become familiar with the trend towards leaner government services and the privatisation of public assets. Many developing countries – known collectively as the South – have had similar changes forced on them, their governments cutting and privatising assets and services in return for financial assistance from institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Arguments for and against globalisation both find much support as we enter the twenty-first century. Advocates might point to consistent global economic growth and integration, to new institutions such as the International Criminal Court, and to growing political commitment on issues like debt relief. Opponents to its social and environmental costs might be encouraged by growing anti-globalisation protests in the North and South.

Some analysts, such as Australian author Keith Suter, unpack these contradictions by dividing globalisation into three strands: "economic globalisation (driven by transnational corporations), popular globalisation (which is the role of non-governmental organisations or "people power" organisations) and public order globalisation (where governments work together to solve common problems)."

The reality is that as the millenium ticks over, the rapid acceleration of worldwide financial, resource and information flows that characterise globalisation provide humanity with both immense opportunities and enormous challenges.

There can be no doubt that recent decades have seen great progress in human development. Worldwide, life expectancy is now 17 years longer than in 1960, and child death rates have fallen by more than half since 1965. Adult literacy rates have risen from 48 percent in 1970 to 72 percent in 1997. In 1965, less than half the children in developing countries attended primary school – today that has risen to more than three quarters of children. Most countries are now independent from colonisation, and more than 70 percent of the world’s people live under governments that are more or less democratic.

Economic globalisation offers huge opportunities for economic growth through increased trade and foreign investment. Australian businesses have benefited from access to new markets in Asia and elsewhere, and consumers have benefited from the availability of cheaper, more diverse products on our supermarket shelves and elsewhere.

Globalisation has also given people new tools to fight for their rights through better access to information and making links with supporters worldwide. Recent events – the demise of South African apartheid, independence for the East Timorese and debt relief for the world's poorest countries – prove that this kind of change can happen in a globalised world. In fact, it is far less likely that such advances could have been achieved had it not been for instant communication flows and co-operative action.