11-13-08, 10:10 am
Original source: The Guardian (Australia)
Since 1959, the Boyer Lectures have been a platform for prominent Australians to expound at length upon some of the key issues on the minds of the people of Australia. Over the years, invitations to give the series of lectures have been taken up by Archbishop Peter Jensen, Professor Geoffrey Blaney, Justice Michael Kirby and Professor Manning Clark. Occasionally they reveal the thinking of influential sections of society that stamp the nature of developments of the years to come. Lectures given in 1979 by the ACTU president of the time, Bob Hawke, entitled The Resolution of Conflict, outlined the class collaborationist push against the interests of the working class that was later given its head during the Accord period under the Hawke and Keating governments.
This year, media mogul and former Australian citizen Rupert Murdoch has begun a series called The Golden Age of Freedom which, while they expose some the corporate agenda for the near future, have so far sounded more like a last hurrah for the champions of capitalist globalization. They certainly encapsulate the thinking that has dominated in recent decades and will continue to set the tone and the editorial line for News Ltd’s vast media empire, but the gratuitous advice to working people, the chiding and the images of a high-tech, free market utopia are by now echoes of the past.
Murdoch has gone to some lengths to establish his credibility as a 'prominent Australian.' He began his lectures with his ponderings upon a Drysdale painting of people in an outback scene hung in his office at The Wall Street Journal. Australia needs to recapture that pioneering spirit, that steeliness of character, he suggests. The world is still a tough, dangerous place – a scene for the endless battle of one against all. Australians have to throw off their alleged dependence on government payments (i.e. the return of some of their tax dollars), insist on smaller government and get out there and compete, compete, compete!
According to Murdoch, Australians should continue to go to war in far away lands. The ANZAC spirit is evoked and Australian enthusiasm in the Dardanelles is contrasted with the incompetence of British leadership. Australia should maintain its eagerness to fight other people’s wars and be more than just a dependable ally of the US. It should take up a leading role in NATO. It should help whip European countries into line for going soft on conflicts like the one existing between Russia and Georgia.
Australia needs to worry that people will not be attracted to our shores and that we will lose our best and brightest to the globalized labour market, Murdoch says. We have to embrace a lifetime of re-training and job hunting. Job security is stultifying mediocrity, says the media boss with 55 years at the helm. Education is the key to preserving Australia’s standing in the world and is even the key to overcoming Aboriginal disadvantage. Education reform will have to be achieved at any cost. 'We need teachers who inspire – not those who conspire to thwart change,' Murdoch says.
Murdoch doesn’t hold with the more 'apocalyptic' predictions on the impact of climate change and therefore doesn’t think we should do anything that would damage 'Australia’s competitiveness' in the world economy. We should follow News Ltd’s example and take baby steps towards being 'carbon neutral'. And, of course, only Luddites worry about the impact of new technologies and the vagaries of world markets on workers or their families. Let them scour the globe for a better deal and a better life!
Such are the fantasies that have been pushed by the proponents of US-dominated capitalist globalization for some time now.
The trouble for Murdoch, the reason his lectures sound backward-looking even while describing some sort of brave new world is that history has entered a new stage. The US is not the dominant economic power it was until relatively recently. The system it imposes is in crisis. The people of the US themselves want change and an end to the wars needed to impose the strategic interests of dominant transnational corporations. China is not stepping onto the world stage in spite of its social system, but because of it. China and India are not the only emerging economies in the world. Russia, along with Brazil and the rest of an increasingly integrated Latin America, are now taking their place.
The people of the world are still struggling towards an alternative to capitalist globalization but, despite setbacks, are making clear progress. Cooperation, collective solutions and mutual benefit are being sought. To Murdoch’s annoyance, Australians and the other people of the world still hold dearly to values such as equality. The News Ltd boss will continue to misinform people but the future doesn’t belong to him or the class of people like him. A new world is not only possible, it is emerging.
