The Forum > Article Comments > Rethinking Australian foreign policy in a post-Bush world > Comments
Rethinking Australian foreign policy in a post-Bush world : Comments
By Ben Eltham, published 20/11/2007Both sides are refusing to acknowledge that we will soon be faced with some very difficult strategic foreign policy challenges.
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We could at least stop putting the telescope to the blind eye. In fact no telescope is needed for those not already blinded by dogma.
Let’s start by giving the full treatment, and more, to what we signed up to (together with the rest of the world) at Cairo in 1994: limiting our own population, and contributing adequately to assistance for developing countries to do the same. Education and emancipation of women underpinned that – providing them with the ability to control their own fertility rather than being enslaved to un-wished for pregnancies. Allow foreign policy to be influenced more by the Australian Parliament’s Parliamentary Group on Population and Development rather than by some personal religious dogma seeping out from under the carpet from Cabinet. Help the throttle to be eased off the population express.
Follow that up with declared and practical acknowledgement that the world’s resources are finite; that treating others as “untermensch” in accessing scarce commodities is hardly nice or lawful, and counterproductive in the long term, as it is for “leibensraum”. Make part of that a demonstration of a desire to live within the limits of our own landscape and climate rather than push them until we completely flog the place to death.
Face up to the problems inherent in economic growth, which breeds boom and bust. “We have never had it so good”. Whacko – why make it “gooder”? Put a McDonald’s in every suburb instead of just every second one; to admire even more the escalated value of our houses (heaven help the non-owners)? There are economists who believe in a steady-state economy – put them at the helm. The HIA, Property Council, etc. might weep a bit, but there is viability in it. Now that economic system would be a great Foreign Affairs talking point, and we would get brownie (greenie?) points from it across the world.
All worth trying. Plerdsus’ four horsemen might gallop over us more gently if we make a start.