 Political Corrections
with Margo Kingston
Want democracy? Then just talk amongst yourselves
Alternative leader: I'll roll back the GST.
Current leader: I'll cut income tax.
Alternative: you'll increase the GST to pay for that.
Current: And you'll raise income tax to pay for rollback.
Are you as sick and tired of the blah, blah, blah as I am? Is this really the level of debate we deserve? Am I the only person refusing to waste my time engaging with this trashing of our yearning for some sort of vision thing?
If either of the small men who dare to suggest they are big enough to rule us well were honest, we'd be well into a crucial and fascinating debate right now.
The Alternative thinks government should have a bigger say in where we're going. He wants bigger government.
The Current thinks we'd be happier and richer if government kept getting smaller, and individuals made choices for themselves about their future.
The Alternative thinks people have worked out that a few extra bucks in the back pocket makes you no better off if you end up having to finance more of your health care and your kids education.
The Current thinks government is so on the nose, people don't trust it with their health or education anyway.
And that's the rub for the Alternative, because his Party set the ball rolling in stripping the public sector of its brains, its status, and its most precious asset – the psychic capital of working in a place where your decisions and actions can improve people's lives. It used to be called 'the public good''. Now the government is just another downsized, demoralised corporation trying to turn a buck.
So the next phase in our debate is working out what we want the role of government to be, and if we want to re-envision it, how we can bring back the talent to achieve that for us.
Because the politicians won't lead the real debate, why don't we send them home and lead it ourselves?
Online reader Don Arthur found on the Net a ‘Budget simulator' designed by a United States university for the 1995 federal budget. To play, you decided which categories of spending (including tax cuts) to raise or lower. When you're through, the toy reveals how close you came to balancing the budget, and a breakdown of where the money goes.
'The results are surprising,' Don wrote. 'Trim the defence budget a bit and close off some tax breaks and you'll find plenty of money for education and welfare. But slash programs for the poor and all you'll buy are headlines.
'How different might the campaign be if we could play GST rollback before Beazley gives us the details? And what would voters think if they knew what else they could have bought with the money Costello gave away to sweeten up the petrol whingers and buy off the oldies?
'It's the kind of knowledge the nation could really use.''
Herald online reader Makus Zellner reckons we could go further. 'Collecting the results of people playing with such a simulator would be a very interesting adjunct to traditional polling. If 25 percent of people increased education spending, let's review the Knowledge Nation policy.'
'Imagine if an online simulator could be used to collect the revenue raising and expenditure preferences of the community. Budget by consensus!'
If you choose to put your hands on the levers, you've got to have a framework. Maybe even a vision!
In his book The Unconscious Civilisation, John Ralston Saul argues that Western civilisation has descended into corporatism, where citizens become mere consumers and 'most of what we reward works against the public good and most of what we discourage or even punish would work in its favour.'
The best hope for us consumers who want to be citizens again is to rectify the imbalance by changing the dynamic of our society, and 'our ability to understand that dynamic lies in our ability to use our consciousness and to move toward some sort of equilibrium'.
So let's leave the politicians to their boring old dogfight and put ourselves on centre stage. If enough of us played, and debated our priorities on the merits, the politicians might get attention deficit disorder and start playing too.
We might have an interesting, relevant, engaged election campaign for a change.
So how about it? Let's ignore the politicians until they say something worth thinking about and talk amongst ourselves for a while.
Email: mkingston@mail.fairfax.com.au
Margo's web diary - www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/webdiary/
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