Bush Talks - The Human Rights Traps move into Hanson Territory

There is a whiff in this report that people should be paid to live in the bush because they have a right to live there. This is a dangerous thesis. For some to be subsidized, others actually have to make surplus income that can be used for that subsidy. This is their private property, and the right to private property is a very fundamental human right. Social Contractarians would say that it is only by being in society that the accumulation of wealth is possible, therefore society has a right to a call on that wealth. That is true, but only in so much as society uses it for the common good. The wasting of taxes is theft, and to pay a group of people to buy something which they can afford to buy for themselves is a waste.

People generally live where they do in the first place because that is where they can earn a living. Rural areas are in essence food factories (and by this phrase I do not mean to put them down - modern CBD’s with their glass walled termite mounds are essentially idea and paper shuffling factories and a lot of seaside towns are now virtual retirement villages). If the costs exceed the income, then people have to move to somewhere that they don’t, and while they have this option, there is no justification for raiding the savings of those who live in remunerative environments to subsidize their life style.

Paying people to live where they cannot make a living holds back the whole of society because it squanders some of the common wealth. And the money doesn’t just come out of the pockets of rich people. Proportionately more of it comes out of the pockets of the poorest people. People in Inala or Redfern can end up paying higher taxes or receiving less welfare benefits so that a country grandee in Roma can enjoy running water.

Worse still, it is demeaning to the recipients of this largesse. Another of the rights that the UN Declaration recognizes is the right to a job, by which they presumably mean a living. What this recognizes is the pride and self respect that humans derive by looking after themselves. But you cannot be said to be looking after yourself if you depend on gifts from others to get by. It is even more dehumanizing if you are demanding gifts from people to help you out with a cost that you could well meet yourself. Australians are very quick to brand people who rely on social security as dole bludgers or welfare cheats, but they are slow to apply the same terms to themselves when they go on the public teat.

It is also ironic that the Commission, in using the rights terminology, is using the same vocabulary that Pauline Hanson uses, and in pursuit of generally similar aims. The Hanson credo is "I have my rights too, and I think others (aborigines, ethnics, gays, the disabled and so on) are getting some of the rights that belong to me". In this context my choice of water was deliberate, as in Queensland, one of the arguments that the State Government is having with the Commonwealth is over the pricing of water. Many of its proposals for dams are uneconomic for the general public and damaging to the environment, but a gift to rural croppers who have the policy support of One Nation and other fellow travellers.

The situation is a lot more sophisticated than the Commission’s report seems to recognize. If sufficient attention is not paid to the complications then the pursuit of "rights" for one group can easily lead to the denial of even more basic rights to another.

I have my own project to suggest to the Commission. While I accept that it cannot institutionally abandon the language of rights; if it must inquire into these social and economic rights, it should come from a more basic position and try to look at root causes. Recognizing that these rights are more economic goods than anything else, it should investigate how the whole panoply of economic techniques can be used to enhance quality of life in the bush. This would require projects in conjunction with economists, and also business.

A proper investigation might come to some startling conclusions. For example, it might be more generally productive of human rights if some parts of the bush were to be depopulated even more. In this case the Commission could participate in the difficult taks of explaining this to the public. It might involve the construction of some sort of rights matrix that would make us all more aware of the interdependency of all rights on other rights. On the other hand, a national project to investigate models for the more effective distribution of banking, social security, and health products in rural areas could be so commercially productive that Government and Financial Institutions might be keen to provide significant funding. We also need a benchmarking study to provide a measure of the magnitude of the problem. While everyone says there are not enough services in the bush, no-one seems to have defined exactly what the level of provision should sensibly be. That would be the first and necessary step in any intelligent diagnosis.

One thing is certain. If the bush is to survive, it will continue to do more with less. It is in the interests of the victims of this process to accept this truth rather than to deny it - then they can get on with the rest of their lives. As a nation we have a duty to explain the facts. Afterall, rural people have a right to know the truth. Bush Talks may be good therapy, but it has to be followed by good medicine.