The change in rhetoric from The Liberal Party, stating that climate change is ‘real’ could be said to be more symptomatic of modern politics. As could Labor’s ‘back-flip’ on the Carbon Tax and ETS.
It’s not acceptable any more for a politician to express their own opinion when they have to toe the Party line and frequently ‘snap back’ to the default views they are supposed to vocalise. The voters know this, and the media arguably encourages by criticising politicians who have even modest controversial opinions.
So following the numerous hung parliaments around the Western world in 2010, maybe that was why the Independents were finally given a look-in over here. It was refreshing to see a ‘one-man band’ step up in the national arena and say with conviction, and importantly an audible voice, that ‘….this is good/bad for my region’. The words may have been given airtime as they possibly bespeak the natural feelings of local communities to look after themselves first and everyone else second. In a nation of Party politics for so long often centred on Sydney and Canberra, these were welcome voices for our regions.
In reference to Margaret Thatcher’s oft misunderstood ‘there is no such thing as community’ sentiment, it is reasonable and practical to assume a locality has to support and look after itself before it can do so for residents further afield.
The same could also be said of the food and power industries. Local seafood, fruit, wine, and other items could surely be better supported by incentives from State and Federal governments.
As a suggestion, a ‘buy your local groceries locally’ scheme would be fairly easy to implement.
We all seem to bemoan the decline of our local food, dairy and livestock industries, but ask us where we shop and it seems clear that most of us buy our groceries from one of the ‘Big Two’ for both convenience and lower prices. We probably would like to change, but we could do with a little encouragement if we’re going to alter our habits; it has to be worthwhile.
The same localised approach could go for electricity too, whether it be solar farms or wind farms or nuclear energy. (By the way, the Australian media could be heavily scrutinised for their repeated use of the word ‘meltdown’ at every opportunity after Japan’s recent troubles, lest they forget the origins of the term ‘media’, but that’s for another debate!). Then the benefits as well as the controversial issues associated with each of them would be shared equally rather than being offloaded entirely onto other communities. And in doing so they would be under the proper scrutiny to come up with solutions.
A community-minded approach would then in theory be adopted by workers and operators in all these industries. At the moment there is a precedent for overfishing (for example, the Spanish with mackerel and here in Australia with snapper and yellowfin tuna), often in places far offshore and near distant countries’ borders, where responsibility is shunted or worse, ignored. Here in Australia, there are similar responsibility issues with water usage from the Murray, and the much publicised lack of support for local dairies leading to numerous closures. The centralised business approach of big supermarkets and retailers is erroneous to consumer feelings towards local industries and pressures local economies. The corporates are also at risk of being labelled inefficient – the very reason they supposedly centralised in the first place — by carrying food hundreds of carbon kilometres back and forth.
Maybe it’s time that our one regional vote carries a true equal weighting with the ‘important’ ones in the suburbs of Sydney that seems to define Party policies. Or maybe a reform is needed so that our vote could carry with it an increased responsibility for properly supporting our own communities first, not just supporting the local Party members for whom many opinions have been formed for them elsewhere by others.
It may be idealistic to assume any town or community can be truly, fully self-sufficient — towns and communities have always relied on trade with outsiders for extra needs- but maybe the goal is still worthy of our efforts both politically and as consumers.
K Nolan,
Port Macquarie
