by Quentin Cockburn with help from Cecil Poole www.pcbycp.com
Germany won the world cup last Monday. On Thursday the Abbott government repealed the carbon tax. Two events; one sporting, the other political, both deeply symbolic. In Germany they know how to win, because, in my opinion, they’ve twice learnt how to lose.
In Australia, we delude ourselves as the ‘lucky country’, we always win, even when we lose. (Gallipoli, Vietnam, refugees, indigenous?)
This has something to do with the mindset. In Germany, having lost catastrophically, disastrously and cathartically, they changed their mindset. Rather than being set back by obstacles, and impediments upon the path to the future, they set about constructing a thinking that was resolution orientated, inclusive, secular, dynamic, and adaptable to change.
Everywhere you travel, or if you prefer, stay at home, you see evidence of Germany’s crowning achievements in technology, manufacturing and energy. Germany, is now geared almost 25% to renewable energy, reaching 75% at times. They’ve done this as well as re-incorporating 20 million East Germans with all their antiquated Soviet technology and infrastructure. Germans don’t have trouble interpreting scientific data; their adaptability and thinking puts them at the front of the pack. They know that to stay with outmoded, and inefficient, with polluting technology is to let their team down – the people of Germany, and by example the rest of the world. That’s why Germany is on top. Great Britain is also following suit, it is now 20% renewable and realise, just as they did in the great armaments race leading up to World War One, that to lag, is to loose ones destiny. And any Briton is too proud to allow for that. It’s axiomatic, complacency is death. Even Rupert Murdoch realises this, though he has too many vested interests to admit to the rubbery science of climate denial. And besides Germany is a democracy. Rupert is a self elected potentate of unquestioned power and unassailable right. (Just ask Andy Coulson.)
Australia is different from all of the above, even different to our close neighbour New Zealand. We’re are an island continent; insular to be exact. Unlike Germany (or Rupert), our industries, our energy producing and consuming industries are not adaptable to change. That’s because, as Australians, we’d rather wobble along with last century’s technology and stuff up the planet, than ever contemplate change. Our politicians have no stomach for it, our shareholders don’t like it. What Germany does is because they’re German. We’re Australians, and we’re smug, insular, complacent, and waver between getting hot under the collar about religion, muslims, refugees and aboriginals , whilst the rest of the world can got to helI in a suitcase!
Consequently, (have you noticed?) we don’t have much industry left. We don’t like fancy ideas, but we love German cars, and machinery. Our politicians tell us that we’re going to be big in service industries. Fancy that. We don’t produce anything, except what we can dig up, and are looking forward to an era when everyone will be a prison guard, a health worker, an aide, a tourism worker, a power plant operator, real estate agent, yes they’re all service industries, and I suppose it all depends on China wanting to buy more of our resources, farms and real estate. It’ll go on for ever – for a thousand years. Uncheckable, unchanged.
There was a bloke that spoke of a ‘Thousand Year Reich’ with such certainty, we almost believed him. The Germans as a nation don’t believe in false promises any more. But we Australians, and the Industry Council and the Council of Australian Manufacturers, and the Council of Australian Business, and the Australian Chamber of Commerce, and the Australian Retailers Association, we are all little suckers, and though the sky wont fall in, we are terrified of change. We need the indomitable Angela Merkel to wander over and tell us we have nothing to be afraid of. Perhaps she could talk to Tony Abbot and say it like this, “Kleiner Mann, was nun”?
Angela Merkel – enthused