Each Monday morning when I travel to Torquay’s Spring Creek Community House to teach Creative Writing, I can never find a place to park. But rather than feeling my usual parking rage I find I’m thrilled to see so many people cramming into this thriving centre of community activity. The House offers support for a dozen different groups, everything from legal aid, AA support, tutoring, counselling, child care and a dozen different classes and training courses. It’s one of the most vibrant and popular community groups in the area.
For me it’s a fine example of what happens when generous people get together, cooperate and support others, particularly those little privileged by the rewards of society. I’ve recently come to believe however that it’s this spirit that the current Abbott government is inexorably undermining and dismantling. The signs of this insidious negativity have been steadily growing.
As our communities grow and expand and we rub against one another more and more, there’s a greater need for the virtues of cooperation, generosity, tolerance and grass-roots funding. Otherwise we’ll just end up fighting each other. The current government appears hell-bent on moving against cooperation and generosity.
Here is some evidence:
1. Cuts to community-based funding
The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), ‘the national voice for the needs of people affected by poverty and inequality’, has recently released figures spelling out the government’s dismantling of support for a number of community-based groups.
• $500 million over five years for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community services (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Tony Abbott and Senator Nigel Scullion)
• $270 million over four years from social services and a freeze on indexation of sector funding (Department of Social Services under Scott Morrison)
• $15 million from the community legal sector, which remains in place for sector support and capacity, including legal aid, community legal centres, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, and women’s family violence legal and prevention services (Attorney General’s Department under Senator George Brandis)
• Foreshadowed cuts of $197 million over three years from health (Department of Health under Sussan Ley)
As ACOSS remarks:
The impact of these cuts is already being felt right across the country: by those on the lowest incomes, people experiencing financial crisis or family breakdown, children at risk, vulnerable young people, new mothers and babies, people facing eviction and homelessness, carers in need of respite, those struggling with drug and alcohol addictions, and those with mental health issues or other serious health concerns in the community. The reduction of support or complete defunding of policy advice and advocacy work in the areas of housing, homelessness, disability, support for frontline financial counselling services and for community legal services has simultaneously reduced the opportunity for local communities to be involved in the decisions made about them by policy-makers and governments.
Meanwhile the most recent budget committed to increase Defence spending to two per cent of GDP within a decade. This is not where I want my taxes spent.
And as well as having a local responsibility for building communities, governments have international responsibilities too for supporting the international community. But when the government cuts its foreign aid to Africa by 70 per cent and the contribution to Indonesia nearly halved it’s difficult to believe it’s a government committed to international security. Cuts in overseas budget I believe also feed into the international displacement of people which is fast becoming as big an issue as international terrorism. Meanwhile foreign aid contributions will be reduced by a further $3.7 billion over the next three years.
2. Independence of the legal system is surely the bedrock of a democracy but we have witnessed the current government’s subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) attack on the legal system. It seems outrageous that in February the Prime Minister claimed that Australian authorities have too generously given potential terrorists the “benefit of the doubt” in citizenship and residency decisions. There’s been a lot of background commentary too on legal decisions from this government, undermining the court system by commenting on the bail decision of a Victorian magistrate for example. There’s also a question of the use of Royal Commissions being used as political tools to merely discredit the Labor party.
Meanwhile critics of the government’s anti-terrorism legislation have deep concerns that, by giving the police and intelligence services considerable new powers in the areas of arbitrary arrest and detention, it will lead to the significant erosion of rights and freedoms that Australians have long been able to take for granted.
3. Free speech has been eroded with these new powers. Recent attacks on the independence of the ABC are a worrying development. This government appears to want less not more rights for its citizens. After all Tony Abbott did tell Laurie Oakes in 2008 that “the problem with a bill of rights is that it takes power off the elected politicians.” Thank god social media exists to express alternative views.
4. Science and climate change:
When a Prime Minister and a Treasurer publicly express their dislike of wind power turbines can a directive to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) to stop financing wind and small solar power projects be far away? Despite the fact that 71 per cent of Australians support more emphasis on solar power and 62 per cent support more emphasis on wind power, this government’s bias for coal power has never been disguised. It has no stomach for encouraging the promotion of ant-renewable sources of power.
Sam Crosby, Executive Director of the McKell Institute, wondered yesterday on The Drum (http://www.abc.net.au/news/thedrum/) if the huge donations by the coal industry to the LNP is a factor in this ant-renewables bias.
And the fact that the federal budget last year announced a funding cut of $115 million over the next four years for the CSIRO, Australia’s peak scientific body, bodes ill for the progress of scientific research in Australia.
5. International obligations: As well as defunding foreign aid, our response to the issue of asylum seekers has become indefensible. There’s no point in repeating the litany of failed policies that sees people seeking asylum (legally) given what former Independent Tony Windsor has chillingly, but accurately labelled ‘the Ratsack solution.’ When our only response to the dislocation of millions of refugees is a three word slogan and the horror camps of Nauru and Manus Island, the system must be labelled as dysfunctional.
When a government seems intent on attacking and discrediting reports and human rights and UN commissions over the abuse of detainees and threatening nurses and doctors who report such abuse with prison, surely a government has totally shredded its own moral conscience.
There seems to be little evidence too of any regional cooperation, particularly between Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia to approach the issue of asylum seekers as a regional problem. In the last few days, the slashing of Australia’s cattle quote to Indonesia is a sign that relations between the two countries need a lot more attention.
6. Using fear as a political tool:
Otherwise known as ‘the Tampa solution’, this is always a political winner. “Daesh is coming if it can for every person and every government with a simple message, submit or die,” said our Prime Minister last month, thus ramping up the fear factor and then this month launching in para-military style Australia’s new Border Force, which merges the frontline functions of Customs and Immigration. A veil of secrecy was then promptly placed over any facts relating to any Border Force operations. Details of the agency’s “operational matters” will not be discussed publicly it was announced
Governments are made up of human beings. We must allow a fair quota of mistakes but when the democratic process itself seems under attack, resistance should be an option.
Communities are the heart of a nation and their slow but sure dismantling is a cause for concern. Once destroyed, living breathing communities will take generations to rebuild.
As a token of my despair at the current government I’m suggesting a new verb for the Macquarie dictionary – ‘To despabbott’ , to crush resisters, ignore advice, downplay the democratic process, have delusions of grandeur etc
