Our news recently has descended into minutiae of wrongdoings. The US presidential campaigns were worse, characterised by trivial he-said, she-said interactions. I fear for April 2025 in Australia and thicker layers than usual of the pseudo-statesmanship exhibited by “leaders”.
I write to implore thinkers to lift society’s sights to the bigger issues. Let’s get the big questions in front of 2025 Federal election candidates.
Plainly, the biggest source of Australian corruption is the bribery euphemistically described as political donations. Ban it. Utterly. Including the soft dodges like memberships and subscriptions. Let all political campaigning be only that permitted by a finite list of events financed by Special Appropriation.
Lobbyists lose a lot of leverage when they are not backed by donors. But their existence seeks to gain influence and priority ahead of ordinary citizens. Withdraw all lobbyist access to Parliament House. Its effect is largely symbolic, but it supports the signals from the ban on donations.
Prosecute the culprits. Robodebt and other rorts. War crimes. And remind the prosecutors that their duties are to take initiative and not await direction. Support whistleblowers in the process and rebuke those officials who sought out a petty technical whistleblower infringement when the initiative was so plainly in the public interest.
Defend our citizens. The USA had no right to have Assange and Duggan imprisoned pending extradition on unsupported allegations of espionage. Australia’s obligations to citizens are to require complete compliance to extradition preconditions, including dual criminality. Australia expects its citizens to go to war and may not go to water when citizens are in need of defence by the nation.
Empower regulators. There have been cases of regulators who have declined or resigned appointments in protest at the narrow and toothless roles offered. Have those individuals design the reforms.
Reform War Powers. Confidence is presently zero that our armed forces (we can no longer refer to them as “Defence” because, as in Israel, nobody can remember the last time they defended) will next be committed appropriately. AUKUS has relinquished our sovereignty. Unravel the treaties and resume sovereignty. Correct those circumstances under which we resort to arms.
Reform Privacy. Criminalise the scraping, harvesting of sensitive private data. Delegitimise the abuse of privacy by means of implied consent to vague, lengthy, deceptive “privacy” policies. Confine the use of sensitive private information to only that purpose for which it was collected (by means of a legislatively-mandated Harman undertaking).
Trim back on Big Government. Federal Parliament has no legitimate role in matters which are presently the subject of state funding. The USA is a model we should reject… candidates campaigning on abortion rights.
Pearls and Irritations has to continue to elevate the national agenda. Because we don’t have another publisher who can do this job. And we have only a few months to make a change.
Glen Davis
Former senior executive and Chief Executive in Federal, State and Local Government. Director of innovative bank subsidiary and retailing enterprises. Former member of Science Council of the National Library. Founding Chairman of the Australian Standards Committee on Smart Cards.BA(Admin), JP(Qual), FAIM.