The Complacent Country

Australia’s failures of principle in tolerating cruelty towards our fellow beings are a national disgrace. Moral deficits such as those revealed by Four Corners are exemplified by our:

• failures to alleviate the plight of aboriginal Australians;
• participation in counter-productive overseas conflicts and “The War on Drugs”;
• bullying and exploitation of smaller nations such as East Timor;
• failures to prioritise our common good over powerful vested interests;
• refusal to radically reform the tax system or even countenance a Tobin Tax;
• inadequate responses to avert or mitigate catastrophic climate change;
• incarceration and trading of innocent traumatised people and,
• ignoring the gross cruelty entailed in the live animal export trade.

Democracies fail when people lose faith in their institutions. The politicisation and subversion of public services are symptomatic. Over-mighty lobbyists blur distinctions between private and public domains. The capacity to develop and implement good policy is fatally eroded.

A moratorium on the live export trade to countries without acceptable standards of animal welfare is a moral imperative. Neither should we export people, especially to countries without acceptable standards of human welfare.