The pressing issues in Australian politics are not the lack of shared values but low productivity and greed. This is where reform efforts should be focused.
Is Australia riven with cultural and religious factions as the right, especially Pauline Hanson, would have us believe? There is no data to justify this claim. There are divisive people in every racial, cultural or religious group, English, European, African, American and Asian. However, 99 per cent of every racial cultural or religious group are good people, while a small percentage can be thoroughly racist, opinionated, partisan and disruptive.
But yes, we are divided, not ethnically or ‘culturally’, but economically. What values are we to draw on to address this division?
The conservative political voice claims we are united through distinctive Australian values but the values they claim to be Australian are essentially common human values. All want to live in harmony. All want to cherish family. All want freedom from domination and tyranny. All want honesty and mutual trust. All want to be governed justly and fairly. I see nothing in these so-called values, recited but never defined by opposition leadership, that address our most pressing issues.
The same voice argues that our way of life is founded on Judeo-Christian values, as if these values exclude people of other religious or ethnic backgrounds. It seems most interpret Christian values as devoted to personal piety and sexual behaviour. These matters are addressed but the overriding biblical concern is wealth and its connection to power and abuse. Abraham, the patriarch, owned nothing. He was a nomad, relying on the goodwill of people such as Abimelech and the largesse of Egypt in times of need.
Let me recite what I believe to be two of the most fundamental of these values. The first Judeo-Christian value is that we are to live from a mindset not of owning but of gifting, of custodianship, of sharing. For a relatively short time we are custodians or stewards of that which was before us and will be after us. ‘We came with nothing and we leave with nothing.’ How we steward what is for a time in our custody, and how we leave custody in sustainable shape for others, is the issue.
I was once accosted by a senior member of the Howard government who came right up under my nose, glared and said, ‘And can’t the rich be saved’. My response was, ‘Minister, I have no problem with wealth, the issue is how wealth was procured and how it is being distributed’.
The second primary value is that of ‘enough’. This is the value of the journeyman. It is the meaning of the Jewish story of manna in the wilderness, and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The translation of the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ is a best guess translation from words very hard to translate. Another tenable translation might be ‘provide us with the rations necessary for this day’s journey’.
We now live in a culture where enough is never enough. This is the antithesis of a Judeo-Christian values system. The more we have, the more we think we need. We are divided not racially but economically, as is the case throughout most of the Western world.
But is wealth being procured through productivity or through speculative or passive investment? If it is the former the pie increases, if it is the latter we are deluded: the pie remains the same or shrinks, while the narrative of expansion prevails.
What has made Britain almost ungovernable and the democratic process in Australia almost impossible to strengthen and reform is the power of strident voices who generate fear by falsely arguing change to privileged status destroys freedoms and rights and dampens incentive.
The British economy is said to be a ‘basket case’. For years the economic wealth of Britain has been focused on London. Why? London does not build ships or grow wheat. How is its wealth generated? Largely through speculation within the banking system. While money moves around quickly it carries the perception of wealth. When the system slows down, the mirage becomes more obvious. Money invested speculatively is not money invested in productivity. The money market is currently dominated by the speculative propositions of Elon Musk and fellow billionaires.
In Australia, there has been considerable focus on investment in the housing market for financial gain. That this has had the effect of inflating house prices, making the purchase of homes for first home buyers nearly impossible, is well understood. But there is another perspective that gains little airtime. Houses are built to be lived in. They should not be investments for the purpose of capital gain. When an investor purchases an existing home, it is a passive investment: it does not produce anything. The money is being parked away from productive use. Investment in education, agriculture or industry, or perhaps a new dwelling, is productive. The more capital that is invested passively, the less productive we become.
The conservative side of politics rightly argues that Australia must become more productive if standards of living are to be protected. This makes their fierce defence of passive investment incomprehensible and hypocritical. If wealth is being generated through passive investment, without meaningful production, it should be taxed at a much higher or more realistic level. That it is currently taxed at a lower level than that of wage earners, who contribute to the nation’s productive wealth through their labour, is not only unjust; it also makes no economic sense.
If speculation and passive investment continue to dominate economic systems, it is inevitable that the divide now keenly felt across most Western countries will only deepen.
Debates about migration, monocultures and various forms of religious and social intolerance are a distraction from the main issue: how wealth is generated and dispersed, how wealth is used to manipulate advantage and maintain power, and how equity can be reestablished as the norm – the gold standard.
This will not happen without significant reform. That reform will not occur while politics is driven and shaped by fear and anger.
George Browning was Anglican Bishop of Canberra Goulburn 1993 – 2008. He was President of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network 2013 – 2022. He is now its Patron. He is also Patron of Palestinian Christians in Australia, and of the Palestinian ecumenical liberation theology centre -Sabeel.