Par for the course - Wooyung and Fortress Australia

Unfortunately Mr and Mrs Kenny are not welcome at the gated community. The reason is - and I never thought I'd write this in the year 2007 - “they just ain't our kind of people”. Ergo the gated community.

By that I mean those in the millionaire class - the super rich. Property developers will dine with property developers.  Some of us came over here in canoes 30,000 years ago, some in convict ships, some fleeing war torn Europe while others came over on the ₤10 passage from the UK or in leaky boats from Vietnam and Cambodia.

But until the last 20 years or so, I suggest that we were all in the same boat. Some might be in steerage, true, but we didn't exclude people from a “community” on the basis on how much money they had; that money inferred a new set of rights on an elite, like a South American country.

The importance of community  What sort of “community” has as its core principal exclusion rather than inclusion?

As Hugh Mackay says in his book Turning Point, "Our values are acquired from the experience of living in community with others. Morality is the expression of community. An ethical system would simply have no relevance to a life lived in isolation", p256.

Robert Putnam’s central thesis in Bowling Alone, correctly identifies a significant shift in social structure and interaction. Putnam recognises the decline of actual community based interaction and the increase of “individualised” recreation and interaction.

If we wish to maintain the way of life we are accustomed to, then it is this very concept which needs to be controlled and arrested.

In fact the invasion of gated communities and their mutant twin, the golf course is bonding local communities tighter as they fight what they see as “viruses” landing on their front doorstep.

Local communities are not only becoming more social and cohesive as they fight these new developments, they're also forming alliances with other townships on the coast facing the same problems. That's real social capital and local democracy in action.