More to life than families, families, families;
This opinion piece hits the nail right on the head
June 4, 2006
The sacred place of 'The Family' is all politicians talk about these days, writes Jason Koutsoukis.
The Family. I know it's a wonderful institution, but can we talk about something else please? Politicians barely open their mouths these days without waffling on about the sacred place The Family holds in all our lives.
Which I find slightly odd, given that most people I know seem to spend at least half their waking hours trying to think of ways to escape their families and do the things they really enjoy. Like playing golf, or shopping, or drinking with their buddies.
It's no coincidence that most murders involve one family member killing another. Or that domestic violence incidents soar at Christmas time when the stress of the family becomes too much for many people to bear.
Then there are the families we have when we grow up. How many of us really relish the thought of spending a week or two with the entire family? Worse still, your partner's family?
At best, most adults struggle to spend one day in a whole year with the family they grew up with all in the same room.
It's a terrible thought that all those hours of love and labour bringing up your kids might not be worth two cents when your kids grow up and decide they don't like you very much.
If you're really lucky, your kids might not hate you. And they might not blame you for all their problems, or all the things you didn't do for them.
But then there is the painful possibility that those beautiful children of yours, in whom you instilled so much virtue, might not actually like each other. It's practically against the law to say any of these things in public these days, but much of the statistical and anecdotal evidence seems to at least point in that direction.
Maybe that's why Treasurer Peter Costello's $40 billion tax giveaways in last month's budget bombed so badly. There was the Treasurer, proud as punch, handing out buckets of money for families, yet strangely the voters haven't responded with much enthusiasm. It's possible people are getting just a little bored with the talk being about families and nothing else.
Maybe people are missing something, like nation building, or education, a word that wasn't mentioned once in Costello's budget speech.
In a bygone age, the Liberal Party used to be proud about spending money on institutions such as universities, but not this mob. According to the twisted logic of the modern Liberal Party, any money not spent on families is money wasted on the "elites".
When Sir Robert Menzies retired, one of the three things he said he was most proud of was what he did for universities. Imagine John Howard saying something similar. It's nigh on impossible.
In 1973, then Governor-General and former Liberal foreign minister Sir Paul Hasluck delivered an address at the University of Queensland. Titled "On Learning", Hasluck's speech extolled the pursuit of excellence in education in a way unimaginable today from the mouths of any of our political leaders.
Learning was important, said Hasluck, "so that we shall have in Australia a body of learned men and women whose standards of judgement and level of knowledge will be such as to create an intellectual environment in which all that is cheap, shoddy, glib, ignorant, ill-organised and unverified will be revealed in its ugliness and pettiness and rejected and so that our people will become accustomed to and require a better level of learning from those who purport to instruct or lead them".
It seems a futile hope that politicians will aspire to talk about something broader than just The Family, as if families are the only institution in this country worth preserving, or building upon. What a refreshing change it would make to hear a political leader speak with the same passion and vigour on learning.
If the nation is to grow, mature and acquire the critical faculties that Hasluck wished more than 30 years ago, then our political leaders will surely have to start thinking about it soon.
Jason Koutsoukis is The Sunday Age's federal political reporter.
June 4, 2006
The sacred place of 'The Family' is all politicians talk about these days, writes Jason Koutsoukis.
The Family. I know it's a wonderful institution, but can we talk about something else please? Politicians barely open their mouths these days without waffling on about the sacred place The Family holds in all our lives.
Which I find slightly odd, given that most people I know seem to spend at least half their waking hours trying to think of ways to escape their families and do the things they really enjoy. Like playing golf, or shopping, or drinking with their buddies.
It's no coincidence that most murders involve one family member killing another. Or that domestic violence incidents soar at Christmas time when the stress of the family becomes too much for many people to bear.
Then there are the families we have when we grow up. How many of us really relish the thought of spending a week or two with the entire family? Worse still, your partner's family?
At best, most adults struggle to spend one day in a whole year with the family they grew up with all in the same room.
It's a terrible thought that all those hours of love and labour bringing up your kids might not be worth two cents when your kids grow up and decide they don't like you very much.
If you're really lucky, your kids might not hate you. And they might not blame you for all their problems, or all the things you didn't do for them.
But then there is the painful possibility that those beautiful children of yours, in whom you instilled so much virtue, might not actually like each other. It's practically against the law to say any of these things in public these days, but much of the statistical and anecdotal evidence seems to at least point in that direction.
Maybe that's why Treasurer Peter Costello's $40 billion tax giveaways in last month's budget bombed so badly. There was the Treasurer, proud as punch, handing out buckets of money for families, yet strangely the voters haven't responded with much enthusiasm. It's possible people are getting just a little bored with the talk being about families and nothing else.
Maybe people are missing something, like nation building, or education, a word that wasn't mentioned once in Costello's budget speech.
In a bygone age, the Liberal Party used to be proud about spending money on institutions such as universities, but not this mob. According to the twisted logic of the modern Liberal Party, any money not spent on families is money wasted on the "elites".
When Sir Robert Menzies retired, one of the three things he said he was most proud of was what he did for universities. Imagine John Howard saying something similar. It's nigh on impossible.
In 1973, then Governor-General and former Liberal foreign minister Sir Paul Hasluck delivered an address at the University of Queensland. Titled "On Learning", Hasluck's speech extolled the pursuit of excellence in education in a way unimaginable today from the mouths of any of our political leaders.
Learning was important, said Hasluck, "so that we shall have in Australia a body of learned men and women whose standards of judgement and level of knowledge will be such as to create an intellectual environment in which all that is cheap, shoddy, glib, ignorant, ill-organised and unverified will be revealed in its ugliness and pettiness and rejected and so that our people will become accustomed to and require a better level of learning from those who purport to instruct or lead them".
It seems a futile hope that politicians will aspire to talk about something broader than just The Family, as if families are the only institution in this country worth preserving, or building upon. What a refreshing change it would make to hear a political leader speak with the same passion and vigour on learning.
If the nation is to grow, mature and acquire the critical faculties that Hasluck wished more than 30 years ago, then our political leaders will surely have to start thinking about it soon.
Jason Koutsoukis is The Sunday Age's federal political reporter.
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