It’s Bennelong time since the rock’n’roll

...Bennelong lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time. It’s why Howard will lose.


In other news, I was forced to argue a position I disagreed with last night. This was because Sherd took the point of view I would normally have argued, thus forcing me to argue the opposite.

Why?

Well, what’s the point of all agreeing? You don’t learn anything that way.

We were watching Insight again and this time the farmers were whinging about water.

“Stuff ‘em” said Sherd, “They should have thought of it before. They made their choice, and they can’t expect people to bail them out just because the world has changed. That’s what happens – things change, people go under, businesses which are no longer viable fold.”

As I said, I have generally taken that line. I realised, through being forced to find a way to argue the point, that this sort of position is flawed.

I’ll use an example. Sherd and I come from similar backgrounds. One of the things people like us believe is that we’ve royally fucked over the indigenous people of this country. We wandered in here, claimed the whole joint by landing in one spot, and told them to deal with it.

So we agree in principle that we have a responsibility to disadvantaged people to help them, if it is our power to do so. The methods we use are often terrible – paternalistic, patronising, downright insulting in many cases.

But the intent is the same.

So we agree that we cannot expect a particular group of people to just suddenly cope when there is a significant shift in the priorities and aims of the dominant culture. We are not people who get the shits with drunks, homeless people, long term unemployed. A lot of these people are victims of circumstance. They have been taught their whole lives that the world works a certain way, and they have lived their lives to suit.

Suddenly they find out that the world has moved on, and they need to adapt. We believe they need to given a chance to do so, and some help if they need it.

How are farmers any different? Sure, they used wasteful practices for many years; they degraded the environment they were in. They lined their pockets with no thought for the future.

But they always had, and they didn’t know any different. Some would say that’s a pretty weak excuse, but it’s used for a lot of things.
And even if this was entirely their fault it doesn’t change the reality – there is not enough water, and a hell of a lot of farmers are going broke.


All of the solutions offered are going to cost money and are going to cause grief to various groups.

Carrying on with “I told you sos” doesn’t do a lot to help the situation. Some people even suggest that farms are unnecessary full stop, and we could shut them all down.
I’ll tell you what, you sit in the corner with Pauline Hanson and her 2% tax on everything while you read “Economics for Dummies”.

I am not arguing that farmers are right. Quite the opposite really. They’ve stuffed the joint up with unsustainable land management, by trying to force a European way of doing things onto a land which can’t handle it.

But all of us are complicit in this. We all benefit from relatively cheap groceries, good food standards and standard of living originally built on a century of farm prosperity.

So we need to change the way we do things on the land in this country. Whether we do it by appointing an autonomous body (politics), diverting a river from the tropics (stupidest idea I’ve heard since nuclear power) or getting people to move to where the water is (holy shit – you mean people aren’t welded into the Murray Darling Basin!?), I don’t know.

But whichever way we do it, let’s do it fairly and reasonably.

This country is quite mean enough already.