BUT WHAT ABOUT JOBS?
WHEN he was Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd had a brilliant concept. He invited some of the brightest people in Australia to a talkfest to come up with ideas about Australia’s future.
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It was a brilliant idea and there must have been some clever concepts, but nothing happened. We never even found out what these clever people suggested. The whole thing just seemed to have died. That doesn’t mean it was not a very good idea.
Today we need some serious thinking about the future of Australia and, particularly, in the shorter term, where will the jobs be for our young people? It is a critical issue and should not become a political one.
In this new parliament there will be many politicians and, hopefully, a few parliamentarians. (Politicians are just that: people who follow a set line of thinking, a political line that is set by their political masters, and that’s it. Parliamentarians are the few who look beyond the party line and work for all Australians.)
What we need now in Australia are a few parliamentarians (of whatever party) who have enough vision to create a cross-party team to look at Australia and its future.
The first issue could be “Where will the future jobs come from?” The world is changing and some big decisions must be made soon about future employment. The issue is too important to be left to the ‘politicians’ to argue about.
Australians, with their high standard of living, are unlikely to be able to compete on the world stage in fields such as ordinary manufacturing. We need some specialised thinking to create a different type of job and we should expect those we have elected to parliament to lead that thinking.
A cross-party group could decide that Australia’s future could be in making products from our natural resources, such as value adding to our mineral exports by exporting steel rather than iron ore. Or, in extensive agricultural developments or even something quite innovative, such as re-creating an inland sea in central Australia (by digging a channel through to the Great Australian Bight) and developing the biggest fish farms in the world.
Or there could be a practical start to bringing water to the dry centre of Australia by resurrecting a project proposed in the middle of last century. Divert some of the fresh water now flowing out to sea via the Clarence River.
The list of ideas would be limited only by the imagination of those parliamentarians and the expert advice they seek from outside parliament. Such a cross-party ideas-fest might produce some interesting concepts.
It would also show clearly if those we have elected to our new parliament are really parliamentarians on simply more of the same, just politicians who do no more than their head office instructs them to do.
Controlling our national emblem
FARMERS are reluctant to talk about the animals they shoot because of the reaction of city folk who don’t have the same problems, but surely it’s time we had some serious talks about two serious issues: excessive wildlife and world hunger.
Doing nothing is certainly not the answer. That would be unfair to the people who produce our food and also unfair to our native wildlife, including the kangaroos that are also victims of the explosion in their numbers. Large numbers will starve in the dry season.
Then there are the wild pigs and feral camels, said to be in their millions, the camels in central Australia and the pigs all over the continent, but said to be out of control in northern Queensland. They are causing huge environmental problems at a time when the world is looking for ways of feeding our ever-increasing human population. The solutions won’t be easy but doing nothing is unfair to the farmers and to our native wildlife.
Ray Williams has been a Post columnist since retiring from the newsroom in 1993.