We have a lot to celebrate each Australia Day, and much to be grateful for.
Our land is one of the wealthiest in the world and, with our smaller population, this means we have one of the highest standards of living imaginable.
Our country is beautiful with pretty decent weather. And its size and location makes it virtually uninvadable, as has been pointed out in News Weekly.
Freedom and Fairness
Breathing the free air of democracy is something to be treasured. Secret ballots, short election terms and the separation of powers should bring a smile to our faces. We have greater political and economic stability than much of the world, and little of the violent civil unrest that characterises other advanced powers at the moment.
Not all is well, but nowhere this side of heaven can be all well.
We may have lost a lot of legal protections for basic human rights in the last few decades, but Australia Day is the day to celebrate what we do have and what is unique about Australia.
The NCC has a long history of defending fairer farmgate prices, better quarantine procedures and a more aggressive role for the ACCC to act against anti-competitive behaviour of the major supermarkets. We know that it’s not about regulation or deregulation, but getting the right regulation at the right time. So, we welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement of a year-long ACCC inquiry into supermarkets’ pricing of goods.
While we know little may come of this inquiry, it is a chance to begin a long-overdue conversation about our domestic food market and the dominance of the two majors.
Retaking Ground
We learned recently that the anti-Australia Day movement had won over 80 councils and a considerable number of corporations to their cause: we should not be surprised. Sadly, the dominance of the corporate voice in Australia has been a problem for some time. To combat this will require more genuine grassroots pushback against the aggressive and arrogant corporate lobby that attempts to tell Australians what to do, purchase and think.
We should be offended by their behaviour, it’s un-Australian and we should be jealous to win back the territory they’ve stolen. Of course, if moderate pro-democratic voices don’t do this, it can create the fertile soil for the radical left or radical right to justify their causes.
Finally, one of the chief follies to avoid in life, according to News Weekly contributor Gary Furnell’s take on the wisdom literature, is insurrection.
Furnell writes:
“[Today] rebellion is considered a noble act reflecting a vigorous autonomy and a commendable defiance; the revolutionary is a hero. Nothing in Proverbs or Ecclesiastes ratifies this celebration of the rebel. Rather, the insurrectionist and the rebel are portrayed as dangerous to themselves and to others; their plots and subversive acts are regarded on the whole as instruments, not of justice, but of injustice.”
(The Hardest Path Is the Easiest, p81)
On February 2-3 we have our first national in-person event since before lockdowns, the Democratic Conference 2024 in Sydney. This is the first of many events aimed at bringing people together to talk about key issues in our society and what can be done.
Thanks for your ongoing support.
