Caring Community - by Order of the State
The Age gives a forum to Labour politician Mark Latham to advocate state-sponsored (read: 'imposed') village community in place of the dreaded globalization.
"I grieve for the paucity of social capital in Australia, particularly under the policy neglect of the Howard Government." "Policy neglect"? What he means is that the Howard government does not have enough policies, enough programmes, enough social engineering.
Latham's programme includes the following gems:
"The most important goal government can achieve is to give people things to do. " Oh leave us alone, we're busy enough already.
"The evidence again shows that where people live in conditions of material disadvantage they turn in socially. A new national campaign, indeed a new national war against poverty, would be a very important public policy initiative." Haven't we been down this road before? Aren't we always hearing that village and community life is more not less integrated in poorer countries? Let's see, a war against poverty would involve...hmmm...higher taxes by any chance?
"The fourth agenda is to cut down on commuter travelling time. People with busy lives do not have the time and capacity to do a lot of things locally if they are stuck in traffic jams day and night. We need to develop edge cities - move the jobs, the services, the infrastructure and the opportunities much closer to the urban fringe - and cut down commuter travelling time to give people the capacity to work in their neighbourhoods."
Again, this was tried in the 70's. Ever heard of 'new towns'. And imagine the outrage if we started carving up the countryside for more industrial and infrastructure space.
"The sixth initiative is to recognise a natural limit on the market. Market forces sometimes can be destructive of social capital. For instance, individual employment contracts, individualistic arrangements in the workplace, obviously work against the collective solidarity of society."
Union man strikes again!
"The final area of public policy initiative is corporate social responsibility - building social partnerships, building bridges from the economic to the social and ensuring that we have much more than passive philanthropy in Australia. I do not want executives writing out cheques on the 25th floor, thinking they have discharged their responsibilities to the disadvantaged at that point. I want them working face to face, developing and dedicating their skills to help people, to build relationships of trust across class barriers, across economic divides, and to build genuine partnerships and corporate social responsibility."
In other words--note this requires 'public policy initiative'--force corporations to run social welfare programmes. Good thinking!
Mark Latham is stuck in a 1970s time warp.