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Doing it for ourselves

I’ve previously written about conservative politics being unconvinced about the very purpose of government. It is becoming clearer, through repeated example, that the Australian people are unconvinced about the very purpose of government.

The recent bushfires and the ongoing drought are just two of the more recent examples that show how Australians will step up to the challenge, dig deep, give generously and demonstrate just how all-round spiffy they are.

The point that gets forgotten in this ongoing round of self-congratulations is that they shouldn’t have to.

We maintain a government not because we desperately want somebody to rule over us, but because there are things in a modern society we should not have to do for ourselves.

At least some of us recognise this. If we look just a little below the surface of all the many examples of altruism, we can see an undercurrent of dissatisfaction.

When Australians are able to make statements such as “They are facing catastrophic conditions. The town has been left to fend for itself”, when we read articles that “Volunteers are keeping Australians safe, not the Government”. When we can seriously suggest that “We have reached a point where the long-running downgrading of our institutional apparatus of government means that the most efficient way of getting money out to people in desperate circumstances is via non-government organisations like Vinnies and the Red Cross” we need to ask if our government is doing the job we pay it for.

The bushfire crisis has been on the front page for a month or two. The ongoing drought crisis has been going much longer, and here also we see individuals stepping in where the government has not.

“I feel f—ing sick because I am taking honest people’s money and they shouldn’t be helping me. But 100 per cent, the government is where the money should be coming from.”

All this is just the latest symptom of a long-standing ideological disagreement about what government is for. Conservative governments have an ideological opposition to providing assistance.

The idea that governments should provide services such as healthcare and hospitals, education and schools, social security and welfare, is relatively recent in historical times. Prior to the 1700s all these services would be provided by the churches or not at all. Government’s role was to maintain law and order and support the armed forces, and that was about it.

If you look at modern-day Coalition budgets, you’d be forgiven for thinking that’s what we’ve returned to. In any area you name the Coalition has, since its election in 2013, slashed and burned, cut and where possible dismantled. Government bodies have been merged, defunded or decommissioned. Public benefit projects like the NBN have been hollowed out and repurposed to avoid them becoming useful to the undeserving poor. Public benefits have been taxed, indexed and regulated into submission.

Coalition governments are welded onto the idea of privatising profits and socialising losses. That’s how they approach energy generation, mining, any provision of services where they can get away with it. And allowing the public to pay out of their own pockets what they should instead expect from the apparatus of State is the ultimate outcome of this ethic.

As I previously wrote:

Money to pay for education, fire services, health, broadband, has to come from somewhere. The social structures – primarily church – which previously might have supported these things no longer have the resources or the popular support to be able to take up the slack. Charities around the country are crying out for support and berating the government for not providing enough basic resources/support; something has to give. In this environment, the idea of “small government” doesn’t make sense.

The government has to be big enough to do the things that the monasteries aren’t around to do anymore.

Of course, the budget cuts that cut deepest are not the ones to frontline funding. The government has learned its lesson from Tony Abbott’s 2014 shocker budget: the Australian people do not like to see cuts to the bottom line of the ABC, of healthcare and social security and roads.

Instead the government makes budget cuts that are relatively invisible: slashing and burning a path through the public service. This allows them to crow that they are “increasing funds” to education, healthcare or other services, while concealing the fact that there’s nobody left in the responsible Departments to process the paperwork. So waiting lists blow out, but also, money is left unspent at the end of the financial year. Not because services don’t need it, but because those who needed it could not access it. Thus we have money left in the NDIS allocation that can be re-allocated to drought relief. Does anybody want to make a wager that this funding will be effectively used in a timely manner?

The Australian people want these services. They have come to expect them. But Coalition politicians just want to win elections, and they’ve convinced themselves (with some justification) that the way to win elections is to cut taxes. When they cut taxes, they can’t afford to pay for these services.

That’s when the beneficent Australian public – the battlers, the Quiet Australians – rise to the challenge. This is when we see crowdfunding campaigns to pay for playgrounds, to enable life-saving operations not covered by the PBS, to support art bodies that have lost their funding or to provide hoses and trucks and face masks to firefighters. And we give. Australians want these services and we’ve shown that we’re happy to pay for them.

This is evidence of a disconnect in the electorate. The same people who donate generously to charitable causes are often the same people who will cheerfully vote in a Coalition government and cheer on the hollowing-out of any ability or willingness Government might have to do its part.

Of course no politician ever saw a way of raising money they didn’t like.

Now we have political aspirants crowdfunding their election campaigns.

We have government bodies, starved of public funds, reduced to fundraising to be able to achieve the things their constituents want.

When we accept the thought of crowdfunding to pay for services that should come out of our taxes, we let governments off the hook. We allow the argument to be framed in terms of what we can afford. When we allow politicians to sway our votes on the basis of promised tax cuts, we should remember that in doing so we are contributing to a worldview in which governments don’t pay for firefighting, individuals do. Where governments don’t pay for healthcare, societal infrastructure: instead the market will provide.

But there are certain things only Government can do. Nobody can crowdfund a closure of coal power stations, or the building of solar farms. We can’t crowdfund an ETS into existence. How, practically, can we the people contribute to the things our Government ought to be doing for us?

Every time we see an article about What you can do to save the planet or confront a blog comment challenging you about how often you fly and whether you use light bulbs, this is contributing to the distraction campaign. Individuals, acting alone, cannot save us from global environmental collapse. Not while governments continue to support coal mining, gas exports, coal-fired power and the infrastructure that supports them.

So don’t let the government get away with claiming that it can’t afford to pay for these services. Don’t allow it to laud the efforts of well-meaning, altruistic Australians without demanding an explanation of why the private altruism was necessary. We have a government for the purposes of providing healthcare, emergency management, social welfare and a host of other social provisions that we can’t do on our own. We expect our government to provide these services without fear or favour, to the needy regardless of how loud or visible they are.

If our government is not doing these things, it is not fit for purpose. So why exactly does it exist?

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13 comments

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  1. Phil Pryor

    With a conservative government of greedy, careerist, vain shitskulls, the epitome of human weakness, we have the worst possible types because the system attracts them as dogshit gets the grubs and worms. Conservative corporate crooks, cronies, predators, political perverts, media maggots, superstitious mediaeval misfits and sheer lazy, uninterested, ignorant non observer voters make it all worse.

  2. Uta Hannemann

    “Every time we see an article about What you can do to save the planet or confront a blog comment challenging you about how often you fly and whether you use light bulbs, this is contributing to the distraction campaign. Individuals, acting alone, cannot save us from global environmental collapse. Not while governments continue to support coal mining, gas exports, coal-fired power and the infrastructure that supports them.”

    Now, isn’t this something that everybody should be able to understand?

  3. totaram

    “So why exactly does it exist?”
    I know this is a rhetorical question, but I will answer it just for fun.
    The government exists (as the IPA will tell you if you listen carefully enough) to ensure that it engages in projects that ensure that the private sector can privatise the profits (create wealth, which “creates jobs”) and socialise the losses so that “the economy” continues to be “strong”.
    In simpler terms, government removes money from the economy (via taxes and deficits) and shovels it to their “mates”, in the interests of “growing the economy and keeping it strong”.
    Choose whichever explanation suits your tastes. They are all the same thing.

  4. Matters Not

    Re:

    there are things in a modern society we should not have to do for ourselves

    Agree! But go even further. There are so many things in a modern society we can’t do for ourselves – even with the best will in the world. Indeed, there are so many things in a modern society that can only be achieved via collective action and that’s where this emphasis on individualism has its problems.

    Seems like some basic philosophical concepts would be helpful. And useful.

  5. totaram

    MN: You are asking people to think deeply using basic philosophical concepts and all that. Really!
    It’s much simpler to dismiss your nonsense about “collective action” as being some woke stuff from latte-sipping inner-city socialists who don’t realise that socialism never worked.
    It is always the rugged individualists of the world who brought us great progress. Think of Cecil Rhodes and the legions of Rhodes Scholars created in his image! Even today there are so many of them giving us the benefit of their wisdom, e.g.

    Tony Abbott enters the nation’s bedrooms once again

  6. Matters Not

    totaram, always remember Bishop the Elder who was so, so committed to ‘individualism’ and against ‘collective action’ that she joined a political party so things could get done. Needless to say, the irony went completely over her head. Not that she was alone.

    Forever onanistic. And in so many senses.

  7. Roswell

    I like this post. It says everything I want to say.

  8. Matters Not

    Re:

    we need to ask if our government is doing the job we pay it for.

    Seems to me that one of the big problems we have is that so many citizens tend to see relationships only in monetary terms as exemplified by what we pay for. It may come as a surprise to many, that it’s possible to have a relationship that doesn’t involve an exchange of dollars. You know a relationship that isn’t paid for. Perhaps a few examples might be in order.

    Had sex with your partner lately? How much did you pay? Was there a performance bonus? Or was it a freebie? With no thought of dollars? What about the metaphorical little old lady you helped across the road? Was it for love or money? Was the teacher who helped you (or didn’t) motived primarily by the monetary reward? The point being that it’s possible to have relationships that go beyond dollars and proceed on the basis of altruism – however defined.

    Lots of complaints here and elsewhere about ‘neoliberalism’ – yet it would seem that the neoliberal ideology permeates much deeper than we think. Indeed it’s become part of our so called common sense. Imagine what government would look like if high ideals rather than dollars paid dominated the thinking? Then again if we have no expectation … we deserve what we get?

  9. paul walter

    Roswell, why does it exist?

    It exists to control and loot the masses for the oligarchy.

  10. wam

    The poor in Australia are portrayed as undeserving rich and the poor believe that the underserving rich should not get from the government. They believe in the cashless card they believe in dole cues and soup kitchens. They are fervent believers in low wages and top up food stamps . They support ‘the trickle’ myth, the climate change myth, economic manager myth and they fear the illegal boat-people myth.
    Outsourcing is paper cheap and, unlike the honesty inherently deep within the public service, is dumbly tethered to the teat and fervently sucking.
    How can you not love the women who are used by the men of industry yet who resent positive discrimination because it demeans their individual ascent.
    There are few fezziwigs and millions of scrooges in Australia who are

    ps Paul, that is why god exists and he only employs conservatives.

  11. paul walter

    wam, dismal science.

    Ralph Nickleby never died, just exchanged his top hat for a suit and tie.

  12. Pingback: Doing it for ourselves – Random Pariah

  13. Bo

    “The POLITICIANS need to get OFF WELFARE!!! Not the recipients.. WHO on earth wakes up & chooses to end up living in poverty??

    IN FACT I reckon that the majority of peeps on government assistance today, LIKELY PAID MORE personal TAX, every year in the past decade than the current swine dressed in suits (ie Morrison, Turnball, Abbott, Joyce, Dutton (the list goes on and on).

    IF they were WORKING to serve the quiet Australians, they would have found a way to reform taxation laws that currently enable LARGE PROFITABLE corporations in tax avoidance (again welfare recipients probably paid more personal tax than the profitable company) QANTAS, Murdoch, Gina etc)

    RELIGIONs still not participating contributors of tax? (eg The Catholic Church, perhaps still the biggest business in the world (NO group has benefitted more than the catholics in Sydney property boom – selling the land stolen from Aboriginals), YET non participants in tax; The $ expensed in medical costs alone, (covered by medicare & the victims or their families)

    IT’S TIME POLITICIANS + Religious groups + Large Corps trading in Australia + the greedy shareholders.. Poverty doesn’t exist because we cannot feed the poor, we CANNOT SATISY the greed of our wealthy citizens..

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