Prosper or Perish:
From Griffith REVIEW Discussion
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
» Read Edition 29: Prosper or Perish
29 April, 2011
George Carrard
(Oatley, NSW)
via internet
Save Dear Editor,
What's this about ‘getting the balance of growth right' (Griffith REVIEW 29: Prosper or Perish)?
How about doing an issue on a critique of the ‘growth fetish' with Clive Hamilton, Tim Jackson, Dick Smith, Kelvin Thomson, Elizabeth Farrelly, Mark Diesendorf and Mark O'Connor? It doesn't take much intelligence to realise that growth cannot continue on a finite planet.
Australia's immigration intake is 6 per cent refugees with the remaining 94 per cent comprising a significant proportion of skilled labour, while the education sector is in a state of attrition. The intake should be less and comprise 94 per cent refugees, with education and skill development encouraged in Australia.
There is much noise and no great creativity coming from large populations. Shakespeare, Newton and Beethoven lived in cities of population less than a couple of hundred thousand.
Thanks for Griffith REVIEW – a great organisation.
George Carrard
10 October, 2010
Julian Woods
(Tarago, NSW)
Dear Editor,
What has occurred since 1945 in the Western World is the systematic destruction of the peasantry. The term, peasant, was used derisively for centuries by the upper classes and rulers who lived off them and who conscripted them for their futile wars and kept them down without education. Writers like John Berger are few who saw the resilience, the productivity and necessity of a peasantry and deplored their passing.
In our efforts to lift up the mass of population in the West out of what was deplored as grinding rural poverty, the social problem has shifted elsewhere, with perhaps worse results. En masse, rural populations are moved into what are euphemistically called ‘cities’ – vast conglomerates with little work, no natural or devised amenities. Even in the affluent US, millions live in little more than shanty towns, and at best, endless unproductive suburbs.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the New World and in Australia there was a healthy balance. Farm boys and girls had the benefit or rural life without the dire results of poverty as in the Third World. With the introduction of universal education, farmer’s children from Nebraska or Edmonton or Tamworth became scientists, politicians, academics and doctors. The introduction of machinery liberated farmers and their families from the back-breaking hand power of earlier peasantry. Now that trend has gone so far that family farmers are in ever dwindling numbers and agribusiness has taken over, with its virtual absentee landlordism, uncaring contract labour and reckless exploitation of resources.
As a result the outer suburbs of Australian and North American cities are the new Outback, where nothing happens, where there are no challenges, no work for a great number, no natural landscapes, no produce and worse, little prospects for advancement. At least in our old outback there was a heroic struggle with nature. This has created welfare states, with the US distributing food to millions, in spite of their dogmatic philosophies of self-help and independence.
The forces of international finance are so powerful that it is apparently impossible to relocate the three million wasted peoples in Australian outer suburbs to rural lands and towns where they could make a decent life for themselves. Agribusiness should be done away with. A far higher percentage of our population should live rurally.
These days there are plenty of technologies available for the small landowner to lift the worst burdens off the old peasantry. Roads and modern transport mean that many can work in towns, leading a dual existence.
Country towns should return to where they were some time back with a ring of dairies, a local abattoir, poultry farms, orchards and market gardens around them. Only then will we halt the dreadful quality and price of foodstuffs transported over thousands of kilometres and dominated by multinational firms. It may be hard for some to believe that in Broken Hill (10 inches of annual rainfall) in the early years of the 20th century Chinese market gardeners kept up supplies of fresh fruit and vegetables to the city.
We are stuck with a system in which we have lost all control and our main political parties seem to think that what is required is more of the same. We are beginning to resemble ancient Rome in its flight from republican self-reliance and hardihood, with hard working people driven off the land, concentrated in slums and relying on bread (McDonalds) and circuses (sport and videos) to fill brains with nonsense and prevent revolt. The misfits are many: alcoholic boredom, more desperate drugs, suicide and hopelessness.
We have a huge country where there is plenty of room for individuals and families to spread out and live, especially in the well-watered coastal strips. But propaganda has taught us to despise the free and open life and especially any hint of physical labour, with little work or recreation It is no longer pleasant nor civilised for working families on ordinary incomes to do more than exist, shop, and drive their kids to structured leisure activities.
The optimum population debate (Edition 29: Prosper or Perish) is meaningless without proper agricultural practices which only family farmers are capable of maintaining over long tenure. With such inane practices not debated, what our population policies should be can’t be clear in our minds even to begin discussion.
Sincerely,
Julian Woods