Two weeks ago, as part of my bus trip through northern New South Wales, I held a community forum at Gosford. It was a tremendous gathering more than 500 people came along to put their concerns to me face-to-face. Of the 31 questions, only two were about economics and one was on foreign policy. The rest were about people: The quality of our society. The breakdown in community relationships.
Loneliness, isolation and stress. Youth homelessness and the drug problem. Disabilities and the aged-care crisis. Male suicide, mental health and the need for mentoring programs.
These are the concerns of mainstream Australia. After 30 years of globalisation and economic change, people are asking: what has happened to our society? How do we relate to each other now? How do we help each other and create stronger communities? How do we rebuild the identities and relationships of a good society?
This is the pressing issue of our time, but unfortunately, it has gone missing in the public debate. While the political system tends to argue for either more market forces or more government, the people themselves have a different priority.
They want more society, more community a new sense of belonging, a new set of social relationships. Among the people that I talk to, there is a real interest in localism.
During a time of constant change and uncertainty, many people glaze over at the thought of complex macro-politics. Their primary interests are at a family and neighbourhood level.
The things they can touch and influence: reading to their children, improving the local school, fixing up the local park and making the neighbourhood safer. People haven't lost all interest in politics. They haven't totally disengaged. They just want politics to be relevant to their needs and interests at a local level.This is a real passion among women in particular.
Traditionally they have done much of the community work in society. Now they want more recognition and back-up from government. This is where we need to rethink the role of public policy. Ultimately, the choice between market forces and state bureaucracy is flawed. It ignores the space in the middle where people come together with a sense of common purpose and community.
It ignores the voluntary associations andinterests that make up civil society. A good society requires more than high incomes and government services. It needs strong, healthy relationships within active communities. For too long, government policy has ignored this vital part of our national life.
Labor recognises that there is more to life than money. We understand that our community is awash with social problems that will not be solved by government spending alone. We intend to tackle the challenges presented to our society by loneliness, family breakdown and youth alienation. But to do so, we need to change our approach. Much of the modern state is based on a top-down system of control.
The parliament passes laws and funds programs. Andit is assumed that civil society will respond to these laws in a manner consistent with the government mould. This is the traditional way of encouraging responsibility and creating services. But it doesn't necessarily create stronger communities. Civil society has its own agenda, determined in the complex relationships between people.
Top-down processes have little impact on community life. It's not possible, for instance, to introduce a Social Capital Bill into Parliament and think that this will automatically increase the level of trust and cooperation in society.
The new role for government is to act as a facilitator or enabler: creating the social environment in which people are more likely to have contact with each other, working together in trusting relationships.
Social capital is not like a financial asset or stock of goods that can be banked away. It lies in the relationships between people if they don't use it, they lose it. Trust and cooperation are learned habits. And if people fall out of the habit of working with each other, that's when communities start to fall apart.
Governments need to create the space and opportunities by which civil society and community politics can thrive. To some extent, this means giving power away. There's a strong feeling in society that too much power has slipped from the people's grasp and has been concentrated in the hands of big corporations and big bureaucracies.
I share this concern. And I want to see greater devolution of government power to the community. People shouldn't have to campaign for better services. They should be running them. When we talk about the public sector, we should talk about community housing, civic education, community banks and other local associations, not just government departments. In many cases, government needs to act as a junior partner to community effort, backing local initiatives and civil society. I also want to see greater public participation in the decisions of government.
For too long, the political system has been talking at people, instead of with them. It looks more like an elected aristocracy than a genuine democracy. Community consultation has thinned out to the interaction between governments and special interest groups. This has led to widespread public dissatisfaction with the concentration ofpolitical power.
We need to open up the political system, creating more forums in which people can have their say. We need to think of modern politics as a civic conversation: decision makers engaging the electorate in a dialogue on issues of public concern.
Only by deepening our democracy can we encourage more people to get involved in civic life, rebuilding communities and social capital. I want this to be the hallmark of a Labor Government, with Lindsay Tanner as our Minister for Community Relationships. The establishment of this new portfolio has created considerable interest. The public wants to talk about community issues, especially those affecting the next generation of young Australians.
At the community forum in Gosford, people were reaching out for assistance. In particular, how can the current generation of adult Australians help our youth? How can we help troubled boys and girls adjust to the demands of a fast changing and more stressful society? This is why I have asked Lindsay to work on a national mentoring strategy, in collaboration with the community sector.
Those who have suffered most from the decline of social and personal relationships tend to be boys. Their school retention rates lag well behind girls. Their literacy levels are lower. And in disproportionate numbers, they are the victims of drug overdoses, road trauma and youth suicide.
Our boys are suffering from a crisis of masculinity. As blue-collar muscle jobs have declined, their identity and relationships have become blurred and confused. We need to give our boys a new centre to their lives one grounded in community support and mentoring.
But this isn't just about boys. Girls need our help too. They have a different set of problems, from sexual assault to bulimia and worries about body image. Young women need stronger relationships and self-esteem to help them deal with these issues. In practice, however, people talk more about the trouble with boys because it is more visible. It's on our streets and in our public places. And when things go wrong, very often the victims are female. We all have an interest in overcoming this problem.
There are one million single mothers in Australia with sons entering adolescence who know better than most how boys can benefit from the steadying influence and discipline of a male role model. An extra person in their lives teaching them the difference between right and wrong. An extra person backing up the love and care of mums.
Mentoring is an idea whose time has come. Around Australia thousands of community-minded citizens are creating a network of volunteer mentors to work with young people in need. The role for government is to add to their efforts. Not to get in their way, but to help them overcome obstacles and insufficient funding.
Many organisations, for instance, struggle to obtain decent training programs for mentors. They also face inconsistent screening processes. And most of all, they lack a national voice and national resourcing.
Each year, governments in Australia invest just a couple of million dollars on mentoring programs less than the travel bill for most Commonwealth agencies. Surely, we can make better use of our prosperity as a nation. This is where a Labor Government will assist: linking generations of Australians through the power of mentoring, providing relationship support for our youth.
Mentoring will be our first investment in social capital, mobilising the leadership role of government to create stronger relationships. This is the best way of solving social problems: putting relationships at the centre of government decision-making and working with people locally to rebuild communities.
Often the lack of community comes down to something we cant buy time. For many people, the lack of time in their lives is just as significant as a lack of money. Its the challenge of our generation: getting the balance right between work, family and community. This is an era of great economic and social change. But not all the changes are positive.
We're being asked to work harder and longer. Yet we are losing the traditional sources of support to help us cope: the support of extended family and community. Our lives are being pulled apart by these twin forces putting pressure on families, strain on marriages, isolating us from friends and taking us out of community activities. For many Australians, life is becoming faster, harder and more stressful. But it shouldn't be this way.
Financially, we are a prosperous nation. Its time we focussed on the prosperity of our relationships: getting the balance right between work, family and community. This means rethinking the industrial relations system. In this era of constant economic change, one thing hasn't changed fast enough: our workplace relations law. It still focuses on the relationship between employers and employees. It has little to say about the other important work-related bond in society: the relationship between employees and their families.
In the new world of work, the typical family has one-and-a- half jobs. And full-time and part-time employment alike is turning over at a faster rate. There is less job security and greater uncertainty about the hours we are expected to work.
Combined with our parenting responsibilities, the inevitable outcome is stress. Stress and the guilt that comes from not seeing enough of our children. I want Labor's workplace relations policy to overcome this deficiency. To give people the lifestyle and peace of mind that comes from getting the employee-family relationship
right.
I don't care how much ACCI and the Liberal Party complain about it. I'm going to put families first. Surely in a prosperous nation, it is not unreasonable for women to be able to work and then after childbirth, spend time recovering and also nurturing their newborn babies. This is why Labor is committed to 14 weeks paid maternity leave.
We want Australian families to have more financial options available to them in balancing work and family. Surely in a prosperous nation, it is not unreasonable for workers to come back from parental leave and then seek a part-time job. Surely in a prosperous nation, it is not unacceptable to give casual workers greater security. And with job security, workers and parents are better able to look after their families. Surely in a civilised society, its not unreasonable to have workplace flexibility job sharing and allowing employees to plan their hours and holidays around the needs of their children.
Surely in a civilised society, we can have a first-class child care system: affordability for parents, decent status and rewards for child care workers, and educational programs for our children. Something more than child- minding: early childhood development.
This is Labor's approach always, families first. We don't want people having to choose between being a good parent and a good employee. In a good society, you should be able to do both. One of the traps in the work and family debate is for policy makers to think that they can engineer certain outcomes, based on certain family types. In fact, this is an area where government needs to be non-judgemental.
No one knows the balance between work and family better than the parents themselves. The proper role for government is to provide a range of options and opportunities that parents can mix and match against their own circumstances.
The objective must be social flexibility, not social engineering. Again, government needs to act as a facilitator or enabler, offering a menu of services and support from which parents can then make appropriate choices.
We should also recognise that few of these choices will be long-lasting. As work and other arrangements change, new decisions have to be made. The balance between work and family is a process, not a destination. Ask any young mum these days. Indeed, this is a measure of how much relationships have changed in our lifetime.
When I think back to my grandparents, for instance, I think of an era of relationship certainty. Pop worked all his life and Nana looked after the children. End of story. Now, in my own circumstances at home, Janine and I have a non-stop dialogue about work and family: how to turn her legal qualifications into a legal career; how to juggle my new work responsibilities against time at home; how to organise child care for the boys; and how to arrange the transport to make all of this happen.
By today's standards, of course, this is nothing special. Millions of Australian families are engaged in this kind of dialogue every night. Its not just at the BBQ. Its over every meal. And its changing the nature of our relationships. Personal relations have always been based on reciprocated love. Now we also need reciprocated understanding and support to get the balance right: caring for our children, building our careers and meeting our shared aspirations in life.
We need plenty of give and take. Once more, its important not to be judgemental. Work is good and successful careers are even better. But they shouldn't be regarded as more important than the work done by parents who stay at home full-time and raise their children. They're heroes too.
I've got to confess, as someone who feels a bit guilty about not seeing enough of my children, I'm increasingly envious of parents at home. They have the advantage of turning quantity time into quality time with family.
Women have traditionally taken this role, but I expect in future, we will have many more stay-at-home dads in Australia. This is an important part of rebuilding male identity: recognising the significance of fatherhood. I trust that working men can understand this new role and, in their friendship and peer groups, give stay-at-home dads as much support and recognition as possible.
We should foster fatherhood at every opportunity. The things I've talked about today relationships, balanced lives and community building are part of a new agenda for our democracy.
It's an agenda that recognises that stronger families produce better communities. That's why Labor will work with voluntary organisations to expand the mentoring of our young people. And it's an agenda that recognises that helping families is not only good for society, its good for the economy.
That's why I will work with Australian businesses, unions and the community to introduce new policies for work and family. Policies that look after the interests of small businesspeople, as well as employees.
As we become more prosperous as a nation, people are demanding that our prosperity has a purpose beyond the accumulation of more possessions. Increased wealth in a society does not necessarily make us happier. People have understood this for a long time. The politicians are merely catching up.
I believe in facing up squarely to the realities of economic and social change. Because it's only by confronting change that we can preserve the positive things about the past and make them relevant for the future: the warmth of a loving family, the safety of a strong neighbourhood and the friendship and fulfilment that comes from being part of something greater than ourselves.
A Labor Government will unashamedly pursue greater economic growth and prosperity, but it will be prosperity with a purpose. And I believe as a society, we can have no higher purpose than getting the balance right between work, family and community. We can have no higher purpose in the service of the Australian people.
I am a socialist. I am committed to the values of humanity, tolerance and democracy. In an era when the repressive regimes of eastern Europe have thankfully crumbled, and when socialist certainties are under challenge, I regard it as very much a daunting task to reinvigorate the socialist ideal in this country and across the world. However, there is a great deal within our country that can inspire us.
There is a great deal that is worth while about our country, in spite of our many problems — economic and other. I refer to things such as our entrenched democratic tradition; our still defiantly egalitarian spirit; our multicultural society and our extraordinary ability to absorb people of many different races and nationalities without serious violence; our commitment to individual freedom and our entrenched resistance and dislike of authoritarianism, pomp — although recent events might tend to suggest that I am not all that accurate in that comment — and fanaticism. We would do well to recall these very worthwhile achievements of our society when we are next wringing our hands about the latest set of economic statistics, because these are the true, great features of Australian society.
"Only by deepening our democracy can we encourage more people to get involved in civic life, rebuilding communities and social capital. I want this to be the hallmark of a Labor Government, with Lindsay Tanner as our Minister for Community Relationships. The establishment of this new portfolio has created considerable interest."
Mark Latham 18 Feb 04
Comment. Yes "considerable interest". Has Mr Tanner a Policy???
February 18, 2004 - 5:04PM
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