A few years ago, I travelled through Tasmania with a group of British tourists who had been touring around Australia. They commented to me that before coming here, their image of Australians was that we were a bunch of independent-minded, anti-authoritaritarian characters who wouldn’t be pushed around by anyone. Their observation since, was that we were a bunch of passive, over-regulated conformists, blindly unquestioning of the impositions made upon us by those in authority while bleating about the myths of mateship and “it’s a free country”.
It occured to me then, that government at all levels deals with us as though we are ticket-of-leave convicts. Privilege, if ever granted, is done so grudgingly. Regulation of every activity imaginable is seen as the prime function of politicians and public servants, who seem to see themselves as the inheritors of the authority of the warders of this former prison continent.
Our rulers, have never been reminded of their unearned status by the short, sharp, shock of revolution or rebellion. We have never taken our freedom. We were only ever unshackled so that we could labour more freely as servants of the Crown. The underlying idea is always present that those who are too outspoken can, at any time, be reined in by having their privileges withdrawn.
We are still expected to tug our forelock to authority, when our elected representatives should long ago have learned that their duty is to tug their forelock to us. But, I guess that’s difficult when you are busy leafing through the brochures for a new BMW, or working out how you can scam the populace by juggling water rates and revaluing properties so that everybody ends up paying more into the public coffers.
They have learned to hide behind weasel phrases like “commercial-in-confidence”, “exclusion zones”, and “outcomes”…and the belief that FOI should be FFI, (Freedom From Information). They have learned how to evade answerability and neutered the press by buying the journalists that used to be responsible for asking the probing questions and demanding real answers.
Is there any possibility of change? I doubt it. The ballot box just serves up new faces to the same game.
Rob Walls, http://robertwalls.wordpress.com/
