My vision for the future of Australia

Last night's Leader's Debate between John Howard and Kevin Rudd may have been conclusive or inconclusive as regards a winner and loser, depending on your opinion, but one aspect of both men and their respective parties is undeniable - neither man has a genuine vision of an Australian future.

Having a set of national goals - a vision, an ideal, a result in mind - is not simply about putting into place the basic social, economic and ecological policies to bring all Australians as close as possible to the highest current standard of living. Those basic ideas should already be instilled in the policies of Government and of Opposition. After last night's debate, Rudd demonstrated at least that he is more determined than Howard to get the basics correct, and for that he should be applauded.

Despite this, Rudd's insistence on a "vision for the Australian future" is as hollow as anything Howard is capable of coming up with. It is here that I will interject with my vision, and attempt to demonstrate to you the difference between maintaining and/or slightly altering the status quo, and making a tough decision to alter the economic, ecological and social course of a nation so that it may in fact survive the greatest number of threats to it.

My approach to the future is based on a larger-scale version of what some term "survivalism". Under the current context, this term describes individuals or small collectives who, in anticipation of a cataclysmic event (natural or manmade), prepare for life post-catastrophe. Survival is the essence of living, be it physically or genetically, and can be approached selfishly, altruistically, or somewhere between the two (depending on your definitions). Before one can thrive, one must survive, but as the understanding of threats to survival becomes greater, an intelligent species like our own must transcend mere survival (what humanity achieved before the advent of science and the Renaissance) and thrive in order to increase its defensive capabilities.

As a Senate candidate, it is my prerogative to come up with ideas about how Australia can operate more efficiently, productively, safely, eco-friendly, and ingeniously, whilst ensuring the highest quality of life for all its citizens. As a neo-survivalist, I am of the opinion that the rampant free-market capitalism that encompasses our national economic structure is an approach that, while beneficial to a luxury-seeking minority in the short term, does nothing to enhance humanity's prospects of surviving cataclysmic events. Neither do I believe that the current socialist models can offer brighter survival prospects, as without an overall long-term goal, citizens are never going to suffer an existence where their work doesn't give them the chance to distinguish themselves from others, qualitatively and in reward terms.

In macro-economic jargon, one hears the following sector labels bandied around: Primary (food, materials, minerals); Secondary (Manufacturing); Tertiary (Health, Education, Hospitality, Law, Finance, Insurance, etc.); and now Quaternary (Science, Innovation, Technology, I.T.).

In my opinion, Australia has serious imbalances when defined by the above sectors. We are slowly whittling away our support for farmers when we should be seeking to be self-sufficient in food supplies. We are looking to exhaust massive reserves of minerals and coal, most of it bound overseas, and will soon add a boosted uranium supply to this, when we should be looking to hold onto all of it. We rely on other nations to make so many products for us - cars, clothes, computers, furniture, housing materials, etc. - that if and when those supplies were diminished by external conflict, we will have little ability to deal with the shortfall.

The tertiary sector is the most bogus application of terminology in economics - health, education, hospitality, community services are all essential to our existence in this day and age; retail outlets are necessary, though less important; the legal sector is less important still, but considering our human nature, still crucial. Then we reach the financial sector, and it is here that Australia has made a massive blunder. We place far too much emphasis on banks, insurance companies, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, private equity groups, the share market, hedge funds, and anyone who treats money as a commodity and/or property as an investor's nirvana. We have allowed Australia to become rich at the top, whilst whittling away at the foundation of our economy, and when our situation is seen for what it really is by the rest of the world, we will succumb to the power of the developing nations like China, India and Indonesia.

The one field in which we should be talented enough to outpace the world, science and technology, is given superficial treatment by our Government. We have done exceedingly well in biotechnology, but increasing the lifespan of millions of people also merits an increase in their productivity and a decrease in population growth, two things biotech cannot ensure whatsoever! What good will it be to have lots of old doddery people hanging around doing nothing in the future? What will those people think when their juniors tell them they have to work into their 80s and 90s? "Bugger off" is one response that comes to mind - most people, inherently selfish as we are, are unlikely to appreciate having to stay in the more laborious tasks for longer parts of their life. Meanwhile, Australia has a very tiny number of astrophysicists, cosmologists, evolutionary biologists, molecular chemists, and only a slightly greater number of zoologists, palaeontologists, and astronomers, as compared to the rest of the Western world.

Having lots of money to splash about on caviar and champagne (and cocaine, some might hasten to add) is not going to solve anything, let alone provide solutions to the questions of weather control, global warming, resource depletion, asteroid bombardment, nuclear war, cosmic ray annihilation, the death of the Sun, etc. Our existence, life as we know it, could be over tomorrow morning. Helen Caldicott was proficient at using this line to scare us about nuclear war, but the range of threats is so much larger than a few manmade weapons flying around.

While we are not capable of solving all of these problems now, it is imperative upon humanity, in this us as Australians, to work towards providing solutions. None of the major or minor parties offer you anything remotely resembling a future plan to do so, nor a method of altering our economic structure to work towards such goals.

I believe there is a rampant apocalyptic mentality putting a stranglehold on the Coalition, and partly on Labor - by this I mean there would be a number of Australian politicians who, along with some of their constituents, believe in a meta-physical Armageddon event, whereby things happen that defy our current understanding of the laws of physics, and bring about the end of the physical world, the Earth. This is derived purely from scriptural doctrine, and does not demonstrate an understanding of genuine threats like those I previously listed. Worse still, some people actively wish for such an event to occur in the near future!

Combining the apocalyptic mentality with the free-market capitalist mentality makes perfect sense to those engaged in both, because the incentive for "fun before Judgment" inspires such a practice. Nihilists will feel equally at home in the current economic structure in this country. This does not by default raise the status of those at the centre and the left of Australian politics though. The Democrats have always been a party of negotiators, not of visionaries, while the Greens have ecological and social platforms entrenched, but not a true economic vision of the Australian future. Neither has delivered a killer blow to the major parties by announcing a plan to make Australia the shining light on this planet.

If elected to the Senate, I will endeavour to present the Australian populace with a proposition for the ultimate national plan - the colonisation of Mars by Australians and Australia alone! To ensure the highest level of safety to as much of humanity as possible, Australia has a duty to become the world leader in food production, manufacturing, health, education, information technology, and science and innovation, particularly in space technologies. The goal of colonising Mars will provide humanity, through our nation, with the drive and energy to improve the quality of those listed areas, and eventually a second "egg basket" to hopefully allow the avoidance of Earth-centred cataclysms. In the process, we can hopefully also work on defensive measures against other forms of disaster - some will be of a "shielding" nature, others will ideally be about interstellar travel.

Australia has the best "canvas" to paint such a goal upon. The USA, through NASA, might at times raise the possibility of Mars colonisation, but when such a massive number of people who live there also believe in the inevitability of impending Armageddon, why would Congress even consider funding such a mission? Australia can capitalise on the large scale social decline of the USA, by building its population through a reverse brain-drain, centralising its population in a geographic location that least harms biodiversity and is least prone to natural disaster, commit to renewable energy across all aspects of society, returning the inefficient coastal cities to nature (but recycling the materials in the new population centre) and perhaps giving Indigenous Australians back the majority of those coasts. With a modified national structure complete, and as self-sufficient an economy as possible in place, Australia can boot out the apocalypts to the USA, Europe, Israel, the Middle East, and wherever else is appropriate for them, and begin the not-as-expensive-as-thought process of sending manned research missions to Mars, with the long term goal of eventually terraforming the Red Planet to make it somewhat suitable for human existence.

So many of you will talk about sustainability, and what can be done to achieve it. Let me put it to you in no uncertain terms - an Australian nation with multiple major cities strewn so disparately across it, with a poor quality rail network, no backup fresh water generating facilities, and a love of electricity generated by non-renewable resources will always be unsustainable. Has anyone ever thought about how ridiculous it is that people live in Melbourne and Adelaide (so far from the rest of the world by plane or ship), or how stupid it was to put the nation's capital on the site of Canberra (cold, dreary, superficial)? The latter I may have to nevertheless deal with for a time in my life, but I cannot accept horizontal growth will ever be sustainable - thus we must look to vertical growth (up and down), on a site begun from scratch. It will take some incredible architecture and engineering, but we're pretty good at all that.

My vision of a long-term Aussie future might seem highly idealistic to you - that much is true! But without any form of idealism, our country and planet are permanently endangered places. Someone in Queensland has to step up to the plate to ensure that at least one Senator in the state has a fresh idea for the future, because the Coalition is definitely out, Labor's ideas are not fresh enough, and the minors and others are either not forward-thinking enough or, worse, interested in stagnation and regress whilst awaiting Armageddon.

Do you want Australia to win the gold medal in the "Mars Mission Olympics", or are you more interested in going to Heaven, with its white fluffy clouds, angels with harps, and every other unrealistic bullshit cliché one can cram in to such a flawed view of post-life? As an adventurous, ambitious Aussie, a Mars Colony project would be something I'd be proud to have been a part of. Kevin07 may have his issues and revolutions, but they are all givens in my book anyway, with further improvements still required. I will work hard to review legislation and ensure no party dominates the political landscape overtly, and I certainly have my ideas and policies about the core issues. What I also have is a greater vision, and I hope some of you find it inspiring and exciting enough to want to know more.

David Alan Couper

Welcome to my new blog, a little easier to navigate

Hello everyone. Welcome to my newly created blog page!

My MySpace blog has been going okay, but with little scope for non-MySpace users to leave feedback, and considering how unwieldy the whole thing is, I have decided that this make may communication a little easier. It is also more user-friendly for me, with nicer fonts, less automated processes that slow down the posting of blogs, and it looks the tiniest iota more professional (even if the site is free).

I will endeavour to repost as many of my MySpace blogs here as I can. Please feel free to make comments and leave criticism. As an aspiring politician, I expect nothing less of you.