We are entering a period of tremendous double speak where villages will be bombed to save them, forests destroyed in the name of conservation, wars declared to create peace, coal burned to reduce atmospheric carbon and all the other doublespeak of the brave new mondo of the fevered minds of money. Another missive from the psychological turmoil that embroils my life as it hisses from Canberra.
The promoter of a Gordon Gecko piranha society has decried a certain coarsening of Australian society.
My, my, does Howard feel that it has just arisen from the swamp or does he think that perhaps, just a little bit, he might have contributed to this phenomenon.
Here is a man of contradictions, he wants to reconcile with the first Australians and yet will not allow them to manage their own affairs through their own elected bodies of the sort they determine are suited to managing indigenous affairs.
He wants to have a sustainable continent but will not adequately act on land clearing, water conservation, conserving Tasmania’s forests or alternative energy production to stave off the climate crisis.
He wants a strong economy so he chokes off the alternative energy industries, the current growth sectors.
He wants to reduce the impact of transport on greenhouse gases yet omits to support the alternative fuel for the heavy transport industry.
He wants a fairer society and yet spends $230 million on advertising rather than social programs.
He wants us to be nicer in a world where he supports the powerful in attacking a country after lying over the causes, having no plan to rebuild the country, floundering around for over a year and leaving Iraq a global basket case.
Here is the man who wants it to be fairer, yet allows an Australian to be rushed, incognito, to Egypt and, allegedly, tortured.
There is a message here John. When you make money the focus of life, the measure of achievement and the standard by which you value life its bound to get much coarser.
phill Parsons was amused by the former man of steel now rising remoulded after the world changed forever, when Mark Latham was elected leader of the Labor Party. Just as the replacement for the twin towers is to have a transparent top so is Howard’s pre-election transformation transparent.
I look for more forward looking rambles of a Prime Minister facing the end of his career. Here he is setting a course for Australia that if he sees fulfilled will see him outdistancing that old rival Dr Mahathir as the world’s oldest PM. How will Dr Nelson rise to be father of the nation, Tony Abbott to be keeper of our morality and Peter Costello above keeper of our dough.
phill Parsons is finding this thirsty work with Manly Dam so polluted it is undrinkable and Warragamba with only 12 months supply left he is hoping that the coming 3 months of hot air flows will bring a change in the rainfall patterns for the place of his heart and the home where he cannot be found.
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Sunday, July 11, 2004