finally: Sense’07 policy release to local media… who probably won’t even read it…!

1 minute… at ABC 2007 Solomon Election Forum

1. Why you have not heard much from me…
I am very angry that the local media has refused to do its job, which is to inform the public about the CHOICE THEY DO HAVE in the Darwin and Palmerston.
The media is an essential element of a healthy Democracy … it’s supposed to be the “Fourth Estate”… the ‘watcher of the watchers… the Custodian of the Custodians… – where anyone can look to be updated on what govt. and other ‘powers that be’ are doing…
Instead, the media has long since ‘dropped the ball’ – a ball I hold up in front of you every time I ‘do politics’ – ‘Real Politics’… ‘real’, ‘useful’ Human Politics.
Real Human politics can only be ‘moral’… as it can only be founded on love of human life, and particularly on love of what makes us – as an on-going, growing group – so very special:
Our ‘Awareness’ (as the Buddhists and others call it) – the uniquely (as far as we know…) human ability to ‘enjoy the enjoyment’ of Life, to – quite literally – enjoy re-creating ourselves (sex, romantic love…), to (e.g. through what Robert Graves called the only ‘real’ poetry) appreciate/love/enjoy the wonder of the World whose co-constructors we are…

Human potential can only be brought out to on the ‘stage’ of consciousness – as in Shakespeare’s “…all the World’s a Stage…” – by honestly addressing – internally and personally – the only real issues for an ‘aware’ being:
“What am I?” “What do I really know…?” before addressing “What should I do…?”, before addressing what all the rest of us need to know: “What am I going to do…?”
Politicians must have a deep awareness of the limitations of personal freedom and of the animal nature of our consciousness… so we can continue to transcend these and other ‘facts of life’ to continue to enjoy the ‘mirage of personal awareness…’

Security cameras and crime and teenagers and “magic carpet – now you see it, now you don’t “ funding of education (and everything else…) :
Put the cameras on the teachers in the remedial classes – watch the hours of video. edit it, use it in teacher and bureaucrat training – and learn that Chris Lilley [Summer Heights High] is right when he clearly shows that one major problem of our un-intelligent education system is:
The anti-intellectual attitude of Remedial teachers who – unfortunately for everyone else – mistakenly think that they themselves are above remediation…
There is no better example of a source of teenage violence than the ‘middle class, middle brow wank’ peddled in our schools as adequate intellectual preparation for life in a modern liberal democracy, whose members have more personal ‘freedom’ and ‘power’ – and who can therefore do more damage – than any but the most privileged of those who went before us…
The current ‘magic carpet, rob from here, to pay there’ funding of Education
[… as of everything else… except the Iraq misadventure, a blunder which may yet cost us dearly - which has been on ‘needs-based funding’ since it started… pity about the lack of ‘evidence-based policy formulation’, though…]
– cannot provide an adequate education for either the individual or the public – especially as global warming may well force us to completely change our ways of life, our ways of ‘proving ourselves to ourselves’ a rewarding

And… finally the Sense’07 position on your favourite issue – and anyone else’s, including my own personal ones:
The policy for policy – the only ‘Sensible’ policy, the only policy that can do everything because it can do anything is:
– exactly what Aboriginals have been asking of Governments since 1788:

Evidence-Based Policy formulation
Needs-Based Funding – no more ‘magic carpet, rob health to pay education…’ funding
Community-based Assessment