I was chatting with someone during my travels last week and he asked me "Why do people want to get elected to local government anyway? Is there money in it?" How I laughed! Then I explained to him what councilors get paid. He was amazed. He asked why on earth would anyone put themselves through all that for a pittance? I told him I don't know about anyone else, but I know the Greens do it because we're trying to make the world a better place. He thought that was just pretty words, but I assured him it was not. I assured him we're all very serious about it indeed.
Hardly anyone knows anybody actively engaged in politics in real life, let alone really understands what they do, but many people feel perfectly comfortable ascribing all sorts of selfish and cynical motives to them. The vast majority of people are very jaded about politics and politicians, largely because of what they read in the newspapers and see on TV and the movies of course. This is hardly ever about the "boring but important stuff" that gets done on behalf of the people, let alone at local council level. Often it's just the highlights of various forms of bad behaviour because the media is in the entertainment business and this is what entertains people most it seems. Sure, just as in any walk of life, there are people who do the wrong thing. But it is not the norm by any means, certainly not in this country, to be lazy or corrupt, even in politics. There are many people who want to do the right thing, but they are often prevented from doing this by a small minority who hold power tightly within their little circles. It's this minority that must be challenged and overcome.
Our new Prime Minister promised to cut thousands of public service jobs in his election campaign, and the vast mass of ignorant people, who don't know what the public service does, cheered. He also plans to privatise as many schools as he can, sell public assets, open up national parks to 'investment', shut down various publicly funded institutions, stop public funding of research that he doesn't approve of, such as climate change research for instance. There are plans to give corporations open slather to 'develop' coal mines, roads, gas mines and the like wherever they want without government interference or 'green tape' as it's euphemistically called. This is all supposed to be in the name of building the 'prosperity' of the country, but everyone who knows anything understands that this is to line the pockets of the wealthy at the public's expense and has nothing to do with the public good or even the health of the economy.
People who don't read or study history don't understand what the world was like before we had democracy and the public service. You don't have to go back very far into history to see the sort of misery that most people lived in once upon a time. Charles Dickens describes the vast disparity between the rich and poor in books such as Oliver Twist. In those days if you were wealthy, you were fine. If you were poor, that was just too bad for you. There was no escape from poverty if you could not afford health care or education. There was no safety net. You either stole or starved if you lost your job. It took the great social revolutions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to overturn this model. It took the union movement to make sure that workers were not exploited or endangered by callous employers. Public libraries, public hospitals and public schools were set up using public money for the benefit of all. Many people died, or were jailed or beaten to achieve these things, but the conservatives would like to turn the clock back and reverse these kind of social goods if they could.
Thomas Jefferson said, 'the price of freedom is eternal vigilance' and he knew what he was talking about. For far too long the general public has been asleep, lulled by cheap consumer goods, television and various other forms of brainwashing. Many have not noticed how our lives have been taken over and how much power has been drifting into the hands of corporations and billionaires. But the people are waking up again, thanks in many ways to the way the internet allows us to connect with the like minded and get news out by going around the mainstream press. Things are changing fast. But we need more people to wake up and join the struggles that are now upon us and will only get worse. We need people to start making trouble, making a noise, getting out into the streets, getting active, joining political parties and environmental groups. We need a new mass movement similar to the movements of 100 years ago. It's going to be a long and bloody fight, but it's got to be done. The stakes have never been higher. We are litereally going to have to fight our governments to ensure our own survival.
