A few good ideas

Here are some modest proposals for making improvements to Australian life. The emphasis is, most of all, on improving our cities; revitalising public transport; helping Australians live healthier lives; and revitalising education.

Reviving transport

In our larger cities, we don’t solve problems. We go around in circles. We pack more and more people into Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. And then we complain that there are too many people for the services provided.

The crux is public transport. Buses are unreliable - even in Eastern Sydney, where I live. They seem to huddle together for company - there will be no 380 buses for half an hour, then there are three all at once - and late buses are unreliable and unsafe for all but the adventurous. But the western suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, often far distant from buses and trains, are served much worse than eastern Sydney. Thus poorer people subsidise public transport for the wealthier suburbs. We need to realise that every person in a train or bus is another one not clogging our roads or polluting our air.

The environment

We all agree that pollution is a menace. Rivers, streams and oceans are clogged with cans and bottles which are harmful to fish and animals. Why can’t we have a deposit on beer and soft drink bottles, plastic bottles and cans? A 10 cent return on any of these would make sure most of them were recycled. South Australia does it. What excuse can the other states make?

Australia is so often hit by drought and as I write half of my home state (New South Wales) is still drought-declared.

Most of the rain falls along the eastern seaboard. Why can’t we make it easier and cheaper for houses in this region to have rainwater tanks? Some judicious government subsidies would help a lot. The same goes for better and cheaper solar power. It’s not all that hard.

Government waste

In so many areas, we are seeing the results of big government from Canberra trampling over the needs of people in the cities and rural areas.

Millions are spent on our defence including new planes and ships. A defence force is necessary, but under Howard millions of dollars were wasted on “the fight against terror”. Of course, these expenditures must have been necessary … maybe? Can anyone tell me how all the expensive ads, fridge magnets, and so on, have helped defeat terrorists?

It’s a bit like the man who walked around England sprinkling salt. When asked why, he said “To keep the lions out”. They said to him, “But there are no lions in England”. And he replied, “See? It works”.

Of course, waste is not limited to Canberra. In New South Wales we are spending millions to persuade people that privatising electricity must be a good thing and the State Government is an efficient enterprise. If it was, we wouldn’t need to spend public money advertising it.

Using our most precious resource: our children

If we are ever going to have a smarter society, we have to see education as an investment and not some kind of luxury. University costs our students far too much. Young people won’t go into teaching, for example, when they have to study for years, paying out money in all directions, to then go onto a lowly teacher’s wage.

We don’t really use the imagination and energy of young people. I’d like to see some competitions to really use kids’ competitiveness - provide some prizes and publicity for the best ideas for revitalising education. And education doesn’t just happen in schools!

We have just finished spending $20 million on a scheme to improve boys’ education. It took years to break through the prejudice against doing a little to help boys (“oh my goodness, this might be doing something against girls”). Yet all the time, girls surveyed were reported as saying “yes, boys need help, let’s do it”. We get caught in these silly debates, boys versus girls. What we need is a better education system for boys and girls.

It’s great for Australians to aspire to be the Clever Country. Unfortunately if you visit classrooms, as I do, the clever ones are the Indian and Chinese kids. Hopefully they pull up some of the Anglo-Aussies. Although the over-40s still read, younger people don’t care to. Everything’s on video, so why bother reading Emma? They say “Just get the video!” For a comparative comment by an American on the USA, see here.

Better teachers

Teaching: where would we start? Good people won’t go back to teaching until salaries and conditions improve radically. Teacher education is a shambles. The university training of teaching needs radical rethinking. It costs so much that good people are scared off. Teachers now in schools tell me new teachers need on-the-job training as is done in the armed forces. The people leaving teaching fastest are males under 30. The number of men going into primary teaching has fallen in recent years from 1 in 3 to 1 in 4, now 1 in 5. You can’t raise a family on a teacher’s wage.

The media

Research shows that the media are powerful. It was the media that alerted us to the needs of women; showed us the importance of pollution, and of climate change. And it was The Chaser team who, almost single-handled, turned APEC, and the vast amount of money spent on APEC security last September into a comic farce.

We need a more intelligent media to better inform our people. Why should the airwaves be clogged with so much American dross? Why can’t we get SBS doing the job it used to do before it succumbed to ads and was  “dumbed-down”? Two or three star programs do not make up for endless repeats of Inspector Rex and pious documentaries. Senator Conroy, what are you doing about this?

Let’s get some smart young people to start some new and better TV and radio stations. We have to give them a chance. I am hopeful that good-quality, intelligent programs would attract an audience. Look at Play School or ABC current affairs at its best.

Using the resources of men

We need to find ways to get parents more involved in their children’s lives. So much could be done to get dads doing more with kids. But stories about men tend to be negative. Men won’t communicate, they won’t commit, they are too stoic …

No wonder fathers won’t spend more time with their kids. We have given them the message that they are unnecessary, and worse, hopeless drones. Recently we heard that men weren’t doing sufficient fathering, even when they had enough time off work. This became an article that sounded suspiciously like a “get men” story.

Every dad needs to get the message: read to your child every day. Spend time with them. You are so precious to your children. Teachers need to get this message too so that they work alongside parents, not against them. If we want men to be better dads, we have to find ways to persuade them and not beat them over the head for bad parenting.

Health - men and women together

In so many ways, men are left out of the equation. Every time I see an advertisement for Community Colleges, it features a woman. We know that healthy eating and exercise are part of the keys to better health outcomes. But what do we see in doctors’ surgeries? Women’s Health. What’s on the bread I sometimes buy? “Good for Women’s Health.” This should not be an “us or them” matter. We need healthy Australians of both sexes. Mothers are an important element in any society. Women prompt sons, daughters and their male partners to eat better and exercise. Healthy Australians are better workers, more effective parents, and they help pay taxes!

Savings and debt

We can induce people to save. There just need to be enough rewards. In the last year of the Howard government, big rewards were offered for investing in superannuation. But those who could afford to avail themselves of this were wealthier older people. Surely we can offer some rewards for those of more moderate means. One useful idea would be to increase the compulsory super levy, perhaps means-tested.

Australians waste too much on drink and gambling. Consequently we have families whose members are at increased risk of violent crime of all kinds. I applaud the efforts of Nick Xenophon and Steve Fielding - two Senate independents who are pushing to break the power of the gambling lobby.

Recommendations

• We need new media dedicated to intelligent and diverse programs;
• SBS must do the job its charter tells it to do: raise standards, offer alternatives, give us new ideas in many languages, inform us of many cultures;
• rethink funding to universities with less funds for more administrators and more money into better teaching;
• find ways of unleashing young people’s creativity by starting open competitions. Make sure the winners get publicity;
• use new inventions to provide cheaper, better water tanks for people;
• provide better inducements for men to eat healthily and exercise;
• stop listening to people with the money: property developers, real estate agents, Telco executives; and
• find ways to encourage ordinary Australians to save, invest, and live healthier and more satisfying lives.