by Quentin Cockburn

Could it be believed?  Last time there was a really big financial crisis, an accountant got together with a group of artists and writers, and cast a new mould, (no pun) for economic growth through the Twentieth Century.  This was after the cataclysm of the Great War.  In the midst of the Great Depression.  And well before Archie Bevan and Clem ‘The Gem’ Atlee gave people what they’d earnt in suffering and deprivation as the “Welfare State”.  The accountant’s name was John Maynard Keynes.  Posterity hates him.  They named a suburb after him.  What then did the people want after defeating the Depression and Fascism?  A sense of social welfare, free education, medical assistance, and a stable indexed pension.  That’s what several hundred million dead and a couple of wasted generations delivered.  That legacy has been forgotten.

It all happened in a little place in Sussex, UK, called ‘Charleston’.  It was here in the grips of the Great Depression, 30% of working men unemployed, that the architecture for our modern era was forged.  And a decade after, the die was cast to instill ‘fairness’ as the basic plank for a progressive society.

Imagine then Milton Keynes and Virginia Woolf in the kitchen.  She’s just finished ‘The Hours’.

Keynes puts down his pipe, Quentin Bell walks in, and in the distance, Duncan Grant, shouts, “Anyone for tennis?”

Milton says to Virginia, ‘Jeez Ginny I think I’ve nailed it”!

She turns to him, ink dripping from her fingers, “The antidote to the world’s worst depression and a saviour for humankind the world over?” She enquires.

“Yes!” He replies matter of factly, stuffing another pinch of tobacco reassuringly into his pipe.

“Its this thing called pump priming, and leveraging the economic process through government incentives to help the common man”.

“Oh,” Virginia exclaims; “the common man?”  She reaches for a cigarette and in lighting exclaims, “the type that read the Mirror?” (1930’s equivalent of Melbourne’s (and Rupert’s) Herald Sun)

“Yes of course Virginia, just because they read muck doesn’t mean they should be punished for it!  It’s all about education and dignity, we must instill these platforms into our new society”.

“What!” exclaims Virginia flummoxed, “So they become more like us? …and eventually do away with first class compartments in carriages?”

“No, there’ll still be class divisions on pubic transport, it’s just that the rich and poor will have to know each other, and with education craft a fairer world for all of us to share.”  He paused obscured in a cloud of smouldering Havelock rough flake. “I’m confused Ginny. I thought you liked the common man.”

“Well I have some sympathy for them, but I don’t want to be like them!” Virginia puts the pen down after scrawling “The End” on the last page of manuscript.  Milton walks out of the room.

Tony Abbott is not strong on artists and writers.  He establishes a Cabal of 80’s ideological fundamentalists to re-jig the economy and surprise surprise they come up with something that’s anti social in every way.   (These people see literature as subversive and artists as lepers, – unless the artist is dead, then his art can adorn their walls as a sound investment.)

Their report seethes with retribution for the poor, and seeks to avenge 100 years of wealth distribution and society with a narrow puritanical fundamentalism.  At the forefront, the axing of funding to Film Australia.  Films, like Maypole dancing and laughter are ‘Wicked and shall be punished’.  And rightly there shall be no redistribution of tax, to ensure that the obscenities of negative gearing remain to enshrine the non negotiable privileges

These people live in a bubble, they don’t pay tax, (or very little) don’t need government services, have entrenched wealth, and would rather the public eat cake.  In actual fact the public realm is just an inconvenience  They see the entire structure of government co opted as a bigger public private partnership.  They as shareholders, get the benefits, for the public, it’s feudalism.  Birth over an open grave.  No wonder they have no interest in history, except for bits where the unwashed shall die for them.  Can’t blame them though as I know history is all about shopping, and consuming.

A plan concocted by the National Business Council (the audit commission) and excuse me just a moment, “The National Business Council”.  The same who presided over the extinction of Australian Manufacturing.  The decline in our economic diversity, the capitulation to Coles and Woolworth’s.  The same who supinely cash their chips and sell any Australian business to anyone anywhere, for personal gain, (shareholders interests) to the impoverishment of us all.  There’s a documentary on this, it was produced in 1937 by Warner Brothers.  In the lead role starred a charismatic Australian.  He is our blogs patron. He had a plan for the redistribution of wealth that called to the people.  It’s not “The Hours” though, it’s called ‘Robin Hood’.