There it was again when I turned on the TV news: President Trump reading a laundry list of protective equipment items and how clever he was acquiring them. It came with reminders of how great and well-resourced the US is, shockproof apparently. I’m not hearing empathy.
While still thrashing out business rental provisions, our government announced extended visas for backpackers to maintain a workforce for essential industries and repatriation flights to get Aussies home. The childcare commitment of the other day will cost AUD 1.6 billion. Oh, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has salted away a cool USD one trillion for the rainy day coming.
Remember all the hand wringing over the exorbitant cost of the ALP broadband fiber to the home proposal? Now it looks both cheap and necessary. Has anyone out there in general public land remembered that an Intergenerational Report is due to be delivered in June? Its purpose is to show us what Australia will be like in five years’ time. All those bureaucrats who have been feverishly preparing it will have to toss the draft and start again with AUD 320 billion less in the kitty. This will require some elliptical or over the horizon projections, imaginative not linear progression. Indeed, we may have to redefine progress.
Recall that slavery was a baked-in essential to a plantation economy and its abolition the great disruptor. Coal needs to see itself as a sunset industry and fall on its sword. Once mainstream opinion supported slavery, even Christians regarding it as normative, but public opinion was wrong. Public opinion on climate change has been allowed to drift along a continuum from hostility to equivocation, the real or perceived threat too far away to concern us. We have now a great opportunity for the new normal to abandon the moribund carbon caper and accelerate development of sustainable technology industry and the jobs that go with it.
To channel ScoMo, how good is the ABC? It has had quite a summer and autumn. Fund it properly in the post-corona world, it’s our palette. See how when we slow down frenetic movement we begin to reflect and contemplate and know with clarity what we value most?
I have now issued two challenges in consecutive days:
- Which are the sufficient principles for designing the new normal?
- Which trends should be reflected in the next intergenerational report?
Australia has 198 new cases for a total 5,548 and 30 deaths. 287,000 tests have been conducted. NSW share of the burden is 104 new cases to a total of 2,493 with 12 deaths. The world now has 1,118,221 cases and 59,200 deaths.
Awesomely Astute 