Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

We need a better balance between material goals and the quality of people’s lives. The economy is not all that matters ... we also need a strong intellectual and creative life. We need the time and capacity to enjoy family, friends and recreation. We need to ensure the protection of and enjoyment of our natural environment. We need active engagement of all community members in the development of that community and the enjoyment of our cultural life and heritage. We should remember too, as the unlikely George Soros has warned, that an open society can be threatened by excessive individualism.

"Perhaps now more than ever in recent history, 'political fear' is being employed in the pursuit of specific political goals and to legitimise the moral and political beliefs of those in power or those seeking to achieve it.  It is a potent device for managing dissent and silencing those who seek a greater share of power and resources. While the government claims to be bringing democracy to the Iraq, at home the spirit and the practice of genuine democracy are more threatened than at any time since Federation. Too much power is concentrated in too few hands. Fear has become the dominant currency of modern public life. Politicians and media populists are already expert at the use of fear to exercise control and ratchet up their approval ratings. Those who raise these fears hope that, by concocting and exaggerating threats to our survival, by pushing the panic button, they can control us. Such fear is functional. It is needed to justify such policies and distract from policy failures." - Carmen Lawrence

"Ours is a time in which the politics of fear is in full flight, although it may be argued that exploitation of fear is the politicians' normal 'stock in trade'. Fear is the most powerful tool of manipulation available to our leaders and such manipulation is a form of abuse. Pressed into the employ of the current Government's narrow interpretation of Australia's "national interest" such techniques can, as Burke puts it, "break and dissolve the bonds which linked individuals with broader social obligations and forms of collective social organisation". They poison our relationships with one another and create a "more selfish and atomised" citizenship attuned to self-interest and suspicious of the claims of others. As many authoritarian leaders have well understood, a populace is best controlled when it's afraid - controlled and diverted. The survival of our democracies depends not on our capacity to hit back at the terrorists, but on our capacity to think for ourselves." Carmen Lawrence

"One of the reasons offered for adopting democracy as a system of government is people's desire to be protected from state-sponsored fear - fear of persecution and death, arbitrary theft of property and discrimination. Democracy has been described as a "fear-less" or "fear-resolving" system and one of the recurrent themes in the evolution of democracies is that government by fear is inherently illegitimate. Most democracies limit the use of fear as a political weapon by developing institutions which ensure basic freedoms and civil liberties." Carmen Lawrence

"We need to revive our commitment to the principle that lies at the heart of our Western, liberal tradition - that every person has the right to be free; a right that is second only to the right to life itself. The right that is embodied in the common law principle that only courts after proper charge and trial - and not government - should decide who is deprived of their liberty." Carmen Lawrence

"Exhortations last year by the treasurer, Peter Costello, that patriotic young Australians should go forth and multiply, caused more than a few indulgent chuckles from the assembled media. Many of those being urged to have more children were probably less amused as they contemplated the hurdles they confront in taking his advice." - Carmen Lawrence

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