Another Labour Day Barbie – another missed opportunity for the Aussie male to confront life’s lofty questions.
Writing in a Sydney newspaper recently, John Howard proffered that “an essential task of political leaders is to outline priorities and to identify the challenges ahead”.
Couldn’t agree more.
What disappoints is his sense of the big issues. Four of his top five are to do with economic security. Only one touches on the intangible. Why can’t our leaders give the bloke in the street something meatier to discuss than stock market gains and oil prices?
Sometime today, I’ll be standing there chatting with the lads. We will have established our association with the hosts, debated expected movements in property prices and secretly ranked respective occupations.
So, where to from here?
I love my sport. I’m keen to analyse the coaching prowess of Wayne Bennett (and his choice of autobiography titles) or to scrutinize how a cricket team can lose a one-dayer after scoring 400-plus runs, but it doesn’t take you anywhere. There is no real momentum, if you know what I mean.
Ditto the time-honoured topics of politics and women. They’re stationary. Pollies will justify whatever it takes to remain in control, while we now have enough evidence to prove understanding the other sex is simply beyond us.
This would be OK except there’s still this troubling existential breach, lurking behind the potato salad or at the bottom of your stubby, waiting for something substantial yet un-named to plug it.
I contemplate delving into matters metaphysical, but fear it’s somehow un-Australia and I will be unable to recover an awkward situation amongst the fellas.
So, you believe in God? Is man free or born into chains? Ya reckon life has a real meaning?
They’re all too frightening to mention, even when the crowd has “loosen up” a little.
My only hope is to bump into a fellow Woody Allen fan and air some choice quotes.
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
How much cooler would it be to cite one of Woody’s characters and his struggle for answers? Cliff from Crimes and Misdemeanors, for example, could provide some worthwhile pretext for Australia’s on-going immigration dilemmas or Peter Beattie’s perennial flip-flopping.
It’s very hard to get your heart and head together in life. In my case, they’re not even friendly!
This doesn’t happen, of course, because there’s a conspiracy between our political, business and religious leaders.
Each has tacitly agreed to stick to his/her own patch of ideological turf. By doing so, the big questions men have had on their minds for the last few millennia are monopolised by priests and mullahs who already believe the absolute “answer” has been provided by their particular saviour.
What is the point of government and corporations working to create prosperity if they don’t move us on to the ultimate questions?
It’s not just the economy, stupid!
Australia is at serious risk of becoming a bunch of materialistic try-hards because our leaders don’t provide Joe Average with an avenue to talk about anything other than winning at sport or making money.
We shouldn’t have to rely on a bookish New Yorker to raise the big issues. It’s time the PM, Premier and the heads of Coles-Myer, Woolies and the banks spoke up.
Not to start preaching. I just want to know if they think there’s something more important and, if so, what’s our plan for figuring it out.
If nothing else, such a commitment would at least give me something to work with come Labour Day 2007.
© 2006 Mark Christensen – An edited version of this article appeared in The Courier-Mail on 1 May 2006
