Seems to me things are getting out of hand with Australian resources. Let's start with the most vital of those resources:
- Air: fresh clean available air is what we need most. Breathing is the thing we do most often. If our air is polluted we get sick, in some cases we die.
- Water: fresh clean available water is the second most needful thing. Even if we have no food, water can keep us going for some considerable time. Water has been captured - and I don't mean in tanks nor do I mean storm-water harvesting. Our water has been captured by vested interest: irrigators; foreign corporations; corrupt political practice. This is affecting gravely equitable public policy and decision-making in regard to this precious resource. Such practices have been detrimental to many people: causing some to receive less water than previous generations did; causing some to be inundated while others make themselves flood free (or try to).
- Soil: fresh clean nutrient rich available soil for food production together with security and sustainability of our food production.
- Landholding: history has shown us what happens when the few grab hold of large quantities of land to their own benefit. It is to the detriment of the many and the cause of civil unrest, even war.
- Reserves: we need to reserve some of our land and sea resources for breeding, restocking, preservation of species. Without such reserves our planet runs out of puff and creativity.
- Resources: who owns the resources of the nation - minerals, oils, gas, etc? To whose benefit and whose detriment are these resources being explored and exploited?
- Civil society: a creative, resourceful, intelligent, and equitable civil society is a most powerful asset. Such a society is our greatest protection against war and strife and it is a place of nurture which, properly established, is capable of nourishing us all physically, mentally, spiritually.
The beginning of 2011 is a good time to think:
- Time to think about how generous or miserly we Australians might be.
- Time to think about how daring, intelligent and brave we can be in facing the major decisions surrounding natural disaster and the personal and national rebuilding that is to be done.
- Time to think about making smart and clever decisions for the future - even if it does cost us. It is our own and our children's future in which we are investing.
- Time to think about respect for each other as individuals as well as the offices held in civil society - lest we become a most uncivil society.
- Time to think about our own self-sufficiency and our own inter-connectedness in forming communities and understanding humanity's own place in relation to planet, peoples, and other species.
- Time to consider whether some people and entities are nett extractors rather than nett contributors to Australia and its civil society and whether the wider Australian population should seek ways to restore equity and equilibrium and regulate the greed within.
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