Editorial

ABANDONING THE COMMON GOOD

There was a strong odour of mendacity and incense in this election.

Suddenly the politicians have discovered that old people exist, and they had needs. A country that could not afford decent public education and hospitals suddenly found a grab bag of goodies.

Most of us have experienced the frustration and fear generated from our attendance at a cash-strapped hospital emergency department. Come the election and, presto, there WAS money for health care.

The pollies do not mention that the financial benefits being offered come from the pockets of the people themselves, whether paid in goods and services tax (GST), you know that tax we were never, ever going to have, or from income tax and duties.

The people were given back what was THEIRS all along.

The unfortunate aspect of this is that if each section of the population is encouraged to ask, 'What's in it for me?' and ignore the common good, then the election will enhance the growing selfishness in Australian society. Not only a few people have 'aspirations'. We all do.

'Love thy neighbour' is a mandatum that also applies to politics. Many neighbours, however, are hidden. Despite its booming economy, Australia has thousands upon thousands of voiceless poor and homeless people. Walk down the laneways and see for yourself.

It also has thousands of people with disabilities, young people working in dead-end jobs or on the dole. The homeless population rises every week.

Such people fall through the statistics - they have given up registering for anything. Australia has a new underclass. Faceless people.

It also has a new class of working poor - where both partners work but they are still beneath the poverty line. There are also other hidden poor - young couples with such an enormous mortgage that they find it difficult to survive. Banks have lured them into impossible situations. Credit card debt has trebled, as people are encouraged to close their eyes and spend, spend, spend.

Great structural changes are needed in Australian society to remove suffering of thousands of 'invisible people.' It is time that all politicians remember that our people need rights, not privileges bestowed by Canberra Santas.

'Been a good boy or girl all year? Here's something now it's election time!'

There is plenty of work in Australia. It is just done by too few people who are working longer hours than any people of any industrialised nation. Their families are victims. The result is appalling. Ask any general practitioner and he or she will tell you that ninety per cent of their patients have stress illnesses.

There seems to have been a bit of Catholic backstage activity in this election. Catholic Healthcare is Australia's largest supplier of private health care and it is claimed that its CEO Francis Sullivan was the genius behind Mark Latham's multi-billion dollar Medicare Gold policy to give Australians over 75 free access to a public or private hospital bed.

On the other side, the media reported Sydney's Cardinal George Pell, who has been critical of Labor's education policy of shifting money from rich independent to poor independent schools, met with Liberal frontbencher Tony Abbott days before putting his name to a joint statement criticising the policy.

Mr Abbott who described himself as 'a very imperfect Catholic' told the ABC's Lateline the meeting was personal. "I may well have been going to confession to Cardinal Pell. I may well have been seeking pastoral counselling from Cardinal Pell," Mr Abbott said. 'Why shouldn't I go and seek counsel?'

Mr Latham, a non-Catholic, could not match that. But the day after his Medicare Gold announcement he could be found at Brisbane's Mater Hospital, where he was most warmly welcomed. Catholic Healthcare applauded the new policy.

It is to be hoped that the Australian politicians whose 'eyes have been opened' to so many problems in just a few weeks will now as part of the love thy neighbour policy discover the plight of East Timor, a country long championed by Catholic social justice activists.

Poor, desperate East Timorese are having their oil and gas resources purloined by Australia.

'We went over there, did a really hard job and thought we were doing some good. But it turns out the government wants the oil reserves,' said former army major Chip Henriss-Anderssen.

'Timor is a country that is really struggling - these people have nothing'.

Former Australian Federal Police officer Wayne Sievers, who participated in the police mission to East Timor during the independence ballot in 1999, said the boundary dispute was nothing more than theft of East Timor's oil. East Timorese earn less than a dollar a day and they desperately need the income from the oil and gas reserves to fund schools and hospitals.

They will only obtain justice if Australia agrees to return to the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice for the adjudication of the maritime boundary.

The Australian government has refused to accept the halfway line as a border and claims sovereignty over eighty-two percent of the field. A consortium of companies, Woodside Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and Osaka Gas, has invested $200 million in the Greater Sunrise field.

It is expected to generate at least ten billion dollars in revenue to the Australian government. The suffering East Timorese have received only a trickle of the megabucks from the field.

Now is the time for the new social awareness generated by the Election to head north to our poor neighbour who cries for bread. However, with the re-election of the Howard Government, the likelihood is that we will instead hand them a stone.