Tax reform, the environment, improving living standards and education; they are all big challenges facing Australia. We need to address them with an open, optimistic mind. Yet we are dominated by a generation that approaches these issues with negativity, not hope.
Last Tuesday night I appeared on SBS's Insight program. The theme was how to spend the federal budget's $10.6 billion surplus. Throughout the program I was the devil's advocate arguing for less tax and government, preferring individual leadership and empowerment. I was also the only panellist in their 30s.
The postwar, baby-boomer panellists who control Australian institutions argued for government solutions through government spending. The roll call of programs was predictable: broadband, education, foreign aid, all under the umbrella of promoting the interests of youth.
This is admirable and their commitment was sincere, but there was a prevailing attitude that each baby-boomer participant brought to the debate: the world is getting worse and government needs to fix it. This claim doesn't hold up.
Even more bizarrely, Harold Mitchell, chairman of Mitchell Partners, even stated that "this is the first generation since 1788 where the kids won't have as much as the parents did".
Australia's gross domestic product per capita has only been going in one direction: up. Over the past 10 years Australia's average standard of living has surpassed all G-7 countries, except the US, and our economy has grown by 40 per cent; and it has not all happened during the resources boom.
Australia is not alone. Last week a US congressional report showed families in the bottom 20 per cent income bracket have had the strongest real income growth since the 1990s, followed by the richest 20 per cent. The trends in the developing world are the same. Sixty million people were lifted out of poverty in China between 2001 and 2004 alone.
Yet this growth has happened when we have relied less, not more, on government for solutions.
The benefit of this growth is that we are able to financially address the social, environmental and economic challenges we face now and into the future. Yet boomers seem to miss this. They need a dose of hope in themselves and young people.
The panellists demonstrated a professed support for government taking a leadership role, while also articulating that government is failing to lead us now.
The boomers have missed the lessons of history. As an institution, government is bad at leading societies. Government is the most conservative, slow and oppressive institution we have.
The largest economic and social growth has been achieved in societies that have reduced their dependence on government. These societies are those that unleashed the maximum potential of the individual, not the maximum potential of government.
If we want to solve challenges into the future we need to look to individuals to be independent and responsible for their own lives. The fruits of individual responsibility are people enriching themselves and society in the process.
Sadly, government has responded in kind to boomer cynicism. Instead of leadership through hope, governments all around Australia have led through fear.
This attitude pervades all levels of government. State governments have been on many measures as bad, if not worse, than the Commonwealth. They spend all their time perpetuating that government as a provider and protector is essential to avoid the collapse of society.
Kevin Rudd is also symptomatic of negativity. He claims to be an eternal optimist. He then promptly waxes lyrical about the threat of jobs from China, our environment from global warming and our apparent broadband deficit. He plays to fear to create electoral resonance. Rudd argues that to solve these problems we need to have faith in him, not ourselves. Nothing could be further from the truth.
We live in an age of super-empowered individuals where people live largely without borders. Today anyone can develop a blog that costs nothing but time and has potentially the same influence and exposure as a newspaper. Our access to information and technology undermines the very authority of the institutions that the boomers lead.
Of course it is a gross generalisation to say all baby boomers are negative, they aren't. Young people have much to learn from them and their experience.
But too many of those who seek to lead us are approaching our challenges with a cancerous attitude. This was demonstrated best through an email from a viewer following the program. He commented that my optimism was essentially a sign of immaturity. If being jaded and negative is a part of maturing, I am happy to suffer from Peter Pan syndrome.
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