Post by mipela on Aug 5, 2016 15:55:54 GMT 10
Things that make an impression and things to ponder. 5 August 2016.
On Monday night, 1 August, along with most other Australians, I watch the Four Corners program re the detention and punishment of Aboriginal kids in the NT. like many others, I was shocked and outraged. I realised also that this wouldn’t be proven to be an isolated incident.
On Tuesday morning, our PM announced that a Royal Commission is being arranged to investigate. Strangely, he saw fit to bypass discussing this initiative with the Opposition or Indigenous Groups and staffed it completely with non indigenous people. Much outrage ensued.
On Wednesday morning, 3 August, I read Ross Gitten’s column in that morning’s SMH. Gittens had been invited to partake in an Australia-China trip to China. H ecame away mightily impressed with the way China is forging ahead in all areas. They have very smooth running bullet trains. They plan that by 2020, they will have constructed 30,000km of high speed track. To give this statistic weight, they already have 19,000 installed. From Beiling it is 140km to Tianjin, the nearest port. Tianjing is a city of 11 million people. The Tianjin Free Trade Zone houses, amongst other things, a factory for building the European owned Airbus. All their jetliners are sold in China. Here in Oz, there’s talk but no action.
Just 36 years ago, the city of Shenzhen was a fishing village just across the water from Hong Kong. Someone decided to turn it into a ‘special economic zone’. Today, it’s a city of 10 million people with an income per person of about $29,000 a year. It has maintained about 45% of it's areas as parks and forest by the simple expedient of having housing go up rather than out. Low end manufacturers are being encouraged to relocate to the inland or other countries such as Vietnam.
Last year, China consumer prices rose by 2% while the average wage rose by 8%. In Shenzhen in 2014, R&D spending accounted for 4% of GDP. Here in Oz, it’s about half that.
In 1995, a small company named BYD started making mobile phone batteries but is now well advanced in R&D in making solar farms, travelling renewable energy storage stations and electric vehicles. They still make conventional cars but is more interested in pure electric and busses. It’s best known in Oz for it’s electric forklifts.
Many Chinese cities cap the number of new cars to reduce pollution but purchase an electric or hybrid car and you avoid the lottery. Buy an electric SUV and the government gives you a subsidy of around $27,000, reducing the price of BYD’s model to $47,000.
And there’s much more mind boggling info in Gitten’s report to add here. But the scale of infrastructure, social advancement is overwhelming. China is fast outpacing the USA as world leader.
On Wednesday 3 August at 12.30pm, I watched Dr Brendan Nelson, Curator of the National War Museum give a speech via ABC TV to the National Press Club in Canberra. Like Noel Pearson’s eulogy at Gough Whitlam’s funeral, Nelson’s speech was a disturbingly moving event. He detailed the losses we suffered in the horror of the battles on the Western Front in WWI. The horrors described made my blood run cold - as I’m sure it did for many other viewers. It brought home the savagery of mankind’s inhumanity for the sake of national prestige.
At question time, Nelson was asked his opinion on whether Rudd should have been supported as our candidate for the job of UN Secretary General. He admitted Rudd had many faults but as regards his push for UN Secretary General, he said Rudd was ‘tailor made’ for the position. He recounted a time when he (Nelson) was Australian Ambassador to the UN. He chaired a meeting of the UN Security Council wherein Rudd spoke at length about matters of world security. Nelson said Rudd spoke diplomatically, knowingly and with great eloquence. Nelson said he’d never been prouder to be an Australian than at that moment.
On Thursday 4 August I read (SMH) where the PM’s call to call a Double Dissolution of parliament – in order to get rid of the pesky senate cross benchers has utterly failed.
On Friday 5 August, I read (SMH) Waleed Aly’s comment (always insightful). From his observations and recounting of things I’d long forgotten, I see doom on the horizon for the Liberal right wing conservatives.
I remember Shorten prophesied just prior to the election that Oz will be going back to the polls before this government is 12 months old. The way things are going, I predict he will be found to be right.
Digesting all this I have to ask myself:
1. What do I think about all these things that are happening ?
2. How will my private world be affected ?
3. How will Oz be affected ?
1. As we humans progress, it seems to me that our burgeoning population numbers are our biggest challenge. Populations are out of control, becoming ungovernable or are ungovernable. To wit: America. Turkey. Ukraine. Many African states. Mexico. Venezula. Malaysia. North Korea. Papua New Guinea, many Middle Eastern states, to name a few that come to mind.
2. My world is under seige financially, superannuation and invested funds are not producing returns that will keep us comfortable.
3. Our national future has been traded for short term gain. We missed out badly on capitalising on the miming boom. The previous and current governments see fit to tax the poorest whilst the better off find their situations mostly not affected and some, enhanced. That big corporations have been, and are, still avoiding tax, is to our everlasting shame. Our government chooses to overlook the ordinary citizen and kowtow to Big Business.
I haven’t asked myself what can we do to redress some of these government induced problems however, I believe we must start with political change. We would be better served if we did away with our archaic 2 party system. A parliament of independents, such as we had at Federation would give us a far better outcome and future.
Oh, and limit terms governance and of office to 4 or 5 years. No career politicians and no latent perks.