Greens as World’s Best ‘Gardeners’

The world systems of culture, financial services and administration can be represented as a dense tropical rainforest. Within this metaphor, each vine, fern or tree represents an individual person or a community, company or government. How can Greens become the World’s best ‘gardeners’?

By Andrew Turk, a member of the Fremantle-Tangney Greens and the Green Issue editorial team

This article adopts a metaphor of a continuously growing, dense tropical rainforest to represent the entangled world cultures, financial services and administration. Among all these plants (i.e. individual persons, communities, corporations, governments, etc.) there are some that are dependent for support and nourishment upon the greater structural trees (i.e. governments and international agencies). Some robust vines have a parasitic relationship with other plants (people), which includes the host of small and tiny plants, mosses and fungi, whose dead bodies fertilise the soil from which the parasitic vines take most of their nourishment.

If one could identify the most parasitic of the vines, they could, perhaps, be removed from the rainforest of our combined communities. It would then be more open and efficient and less tangled and competitive. However, it is often difficult to identify which of the vines are contributing usefully to the whole healthy structure and which are the most parasitic. If we could cut down the worst vines, and give more nourishment to the helpful ones, we would all be much better off. To do this we need to understand all the complex sets of components and multi-nodal inter-relations and, thus, become an efficient ‘gardener’. Also, we need the skills to climb up the growing structure with (the equivalent of) a small chainsaw to cut out the ‘enemies of the people’ vines, leaving helpful plants unscathed and still adequately supported.

This ‘gardening’ task is never-ending. As our world forest continues to grow at a rapid rate, we need many more ‘gardeners’, equipped with better tools. Imagine if we could identify where each parasitic plant grew out of the ground. Perhaps, we could use against them an effective, non-polluting poison, that only worked on the parasitic plants. We could then efficiently eliminate each one in turn, replacing them with a fruiting vine or a plant making fibre for eating, producing clothing, building structures, etc. How can we apply this metaphor to improve society?

Unfortunately, this form of ‘gardening’ is extremely difficult and demanding. It has been successful in some regions of the World ‘forest’ through peaceful introduction of more equitable types of democracy and less rapacious versions of capitalism. However, too often in a small country, or even a large region of our global ‘forest’, it has required warfare between competing perspectives; one for change and another seeking continuation of the existing system. This has sometimes resulted in virtual destruction of that area of ‘forest’ and replacement of it with highly regulated rows of communistic plants, and substitution of people elected to be leaders (i.e. competent ’gardeners’) with a hierarchy of self appointed officials or religious leaders. We don’t want anything like that to happen in Australia. Can we work on understanding our situation, at multiple levels of abstraction, using a methodology befitting a political party such as the Greens?

Politicians are the best climbers of anything that stands still long enough for them to grab a hand-hold. They can reach the very top of the highest trees in our imagined rainforest. From that height they are afforded a better overview of the World, and/or the local situation, to facilitate formulation of appropriate grand plans. However, it is the middle management of political parties and government agencies who need to do the bulk of the ‘gardening’ to operationalize those plans. The great mass of party members and government employees can then implement the detailed action plans, of cutting down some offending vegetation and planting other more useful types, gradually reducing the impact of the parasitic vines of ultra-capitalism, managerialism, etc..

To apply successfully our rainforest metaphor, we need to first find a trans-disciplinary methodology for understanding its structure as a multi-level hierarchy of control. We also need to seek the most appropriate meta-paradigm (e.g. phenomenology) to be able to link together the design of any investigation and the analysis of outcomes of trials (or experimental results) in an integrated, efficient, effective and equitable manner. This is not an easy task.

A positive step by the Greens Party would be to assist our Australian society to remove itself from the cycle of ever increasing complexity and dominance of society by the rich and powerful, instead of the way a true democracy should work. We are in this mess because major political parties have progressively become more right-wing, favouring the interests of the rich over the needs of the general population. For instance, wealthy investors are advantaged by the Negative Gearing policy for investment properties, which inflates property prices, making housing much more difficult to afford for first-home buyers. This policy also costs the government billions in lost tax revenue, exacerbating the difficulty for funding social justice programs. A similar situation prevails regarding policies that allow for expanded B&B accommodation.

We need to gather together left-leaning Australians to fight this type of policy, not just sit back and let matters get worse. As first-rate ‘gardeners’ in the socio/political/economic rainforest, we Greens should develop policies which address the key instances of parasitic ‘vine’ growth. For example, a detailed study is needed of the sources of increasing wealth and analysis of which citizens are advantaged and which are disadvantaged. Basing policies on such research also makes them easier to ‘sell’ to voters.

A useful approach can be to highlight areas of policy development which address demonstrated non-democratic practices. Here are seven example issues that we could highlight:

1. The obscene profits of many mining companies are based on the capitalistic false proposition that the minerals belong to the mining company, not the Australian public. This fails to recognise the work of the Commonwealth Government Bureau of Mineral Resources (BMR). Especially in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the BMR was the most demanding customer for the 1:100.000 and 1:250,000 topographic maps produce by my predecessors, myself and my contemporaries in the Commonwealth Division of National Mapping (NATMAP). The BMR used these maps to record the geology all over Australia and the likely location of minerals suitable for extraction. The old principle of ‘finders, keepers’ might have been useful at colonisation of Australia with regard to small nuggets of gold found by prospectors in creeks. However, it is a completely different ‘kettle of fish’ when we are talking about a few billion cubic metres of iron ore. With the excuse of creating jobs, mining companies have been allowed to mine minerals on land previously under the custodianship of Aboriginal peoples for tens of thousands of years. Until very recently they could mostly ignore the presence of sacred sites and pay only a miserable amount for destruction of Country.

POLICY COMMENTS: The Australian Greens' policy on mining royalties includes increasing rates, especially for fossil fuels like coal and gas, to capture more wealth for the public. They advocate for a progressive royalty structure, ending royalty holidays, and redirecting more revenue to affected regions. Additionally, their policies aim to capture excessive profits from mining projects through a mining super profits tax and ensure royalties are paid on gas extraction. In states like WA, mining companies have corrupted both Labor and Coalition parties, so perhaps more control should be with the Commonwealth government. However, recent pressures to streamline Federal approval processes raise a red flag.

2. Over the last fifty years, there has been a steadily increasing re-definition of what it means to be a ‘professional’. In the 1970s and 80s I held leadership positions in the Institution of Surveyors Australia (ISA), Institute of Cartographers and the Council of Professions. Each profession had a well defined, and strictly adhered-to, relationship with civil society. Their members had rights to undertake community tasks (like altering the property cadastre, running courts of law, advising government with respect to their professional knowledge, etc.). In return, they received a reasonable salary or were allowed to charge appropriate fees, befitting citizens having completed university degrees, the content of which was overseen by professional associations, like the ISA. The rate of their fees charged to clients were strictly controlled so that they received adequate remuneration, but were forbidden to charge fees based on what the market was prepared to pay. This effective social contract system had evolved over a long period of trial and error. However, during recent decades, with the rise in commercialization, managerialism and greed, this social contract has broken down. Health services companies charge customers ever higher fees, within a poorly regulated system. They demand ever higher profits, at the expense of patient care and the physical and mental health of their doctors. I have noticed (over 30 years) the decline in treatment by my health services company, after it emerged from a professional practice involving several doctors, under the leadership of a great older GP. I have sadly also witnessed significantly increased illness and definite signs of ‘burn-out’ in some GPs.

POLICY COMMENTS: Australian Greens policy calls for a strong public hospital system to ensure everyone has access to high-quality health care when they need it. This will be achieved via raising government health services funding and increasing taxation of health companies. An effective healthcare system is dependent upon a skilled, well-resourced workforce and a comprehensive program of medical research. Regulation of relationships between government and private health providers need review (e.g. public hospitals encouraging patients, with private insurance, to become ‘private patients’, with the costs then passed onto their health fund).

3. Regarding a similar instance of the decline in professional standards, is the current situation with lawyers, in particular divorce lawyers. A friend of mine was recently having some difficulties in his relationship with his wife. He decided to seek advice and assistance from a local divorce lawyer, and was directed to one reasonably well acquainted with the necessary procedures. He was shocked when the proposed contract for the lawyer’s services nominated his fee rate as $450 per hour. He immediately used Google to establish that junior lawyers might charge as little as $250 per hour, with experienced ones charging $450 to $550 and very experienced ones up to $1,000 per hour. Again with assistance from google, it seems that, in recent years, there have been between 47,000 and 49,000 divorces per year in Australia. Some may be uncontested and some people might not use a lawyer despite their partner doing so. Hence we might deduce that there are at least 50,000 lawyers involved. Given that the average charge is about $400 per hour. I believe the average cost to a client is probably at least $16,000 (40 hours), hence, the cost to Australian citizens for this official process could be said to total at least $800 Million pa. A huge expense for a basic part of many people’s lives, at a time when women are often vulnerable, with anxiety about distribution of funds. I can say fortunately that the psychologist I see regularly only charges me $350 per hour. He tells me that his professional association (which in the circumstances is probably better termed his union) has written to him complaining that he is undercutting their other members and should be charging at least $450 per hour. He also tells me that psychiatrists on graduation from their course, with no post-graduation experience charge $300 per hour. Disgraceful.

POLICY COMMENTS: The Australian Greens' policy on divorce focuses on strengthening the family law system through increased funding. Also to improve safety and support for children and domestic violence survivors via training for specialist judges, and support services. A review could seek to identify a cheaper and easier system for those who need divorce, via reduction in the excessive fees charged by lawyers. Reasonable fee rates should be charged, rather than the current wicked ‘free market’ system. Strengthening government services could also assist.

4. Unfortunately on Christmas day 2025 our supply of water to our house sprung a leak. I turned off the water and stored the water still in the pipes in multiple containers so I could survive a few days. I rang my wife, on holiday in Tasmania, to let her know the situation and that I was fine, but she insisted on taking control and said she would ring her favourite plumber. Each day I reported to her my situation and that I was fine and she updated the possibility of the plumber coming. Ultimately by 27^th December I was running low and my daughter’s husband brought over two very large containers of water. I told my wife I now had enough for a week and was fine. On the afternoon of 28^th December she rang to say that the plumber would arrive in 10 minutes. He turned out not to be from the firm my wife had said but he confirmed conversation with her. He said that the job could cost as much as $800 or $900 depending on what he found when he dug it up. As that sounded an awful lot, I checked with my wife. She said that sounded OK and we needed the water to be fixed, so I told the plumber to proceed. I went and fetched a plastic chair from the shed and sat and watched all that happened. The job was very easy, just replacing a small section of thin metal pipe, and only took him 45 minutes. However, about one third of that time he was discussing another job, on the phone, with a colleague. Lets be generous and say with travelling time, etc. his total time was not 30 minutes but one hour. He completed the work to my satisfaction and I said I was ready to pay him. He asked for $950; $700 for his fixed price, $200 call-out fee. There was an extra $50 for some something I can’t remember, but we could consider it as covering the hourly cost of amortising the value of his vehicle and equipment. I refused to pay, did a quick calculation of say $900 as his hourly rate (40 hours per week for 50 weeks a year = $1,800,000) and said that I thought an effective salary of nearly $2Mil was greatly excessive. He rang my wife who said to pay him as she had agreed to his flat rate. This was beyond belief and I explained to him the meaning of unethical and he reluctantly cut $100 off the fee. So ultimately, his hourly rate was about $800, although he tried to get $900. As an academic researcher, with three undergraduate degrees and two PhDs, the highest hourly rate I ever charged was $60, and, for virtually all work directly with Aboriginal communities, I charged nothing. Mind you, that was in about 2010 so that would be at today’s rate a bit less than $90 per hour that was my highest charge-out rate. Since pretending to 'retire' in 2016 (at the age of 67) I continue my research without any payment. Obviously, a young tradesman thinks he is worth $800 or $900 per hour because it was a Sunday. He said to me we were lucky we didn’t need him over Christmas, or it would have been a much higher price. This ambitious young man probably wants to have a second house to rent-out using ‘negative gearing’ as soon as humanly possible, regardless of ethics.

POLICY COMMENTS: Clearly greed capitalism is rampant and competition is not keeping fees for service at a reasonable rate. The system is extremely sick and needs urgent government treatment and control. When before the last election, our now extremely well paid Prime Minister said he would defiantly not get rid of the ‘negative gearing’ policy, if he won the election, because he himself ‘negatively gears’ four properties. He is the leader of the (supposedly left-wing) Australian Labor Party. This was just one of the reasons I resigned my membership of the ALP. The Greens Party must expose these sorts of disgusting behavior and insist that ‘negative gearing’ be ended and that a system of government control of all prices be implemented immediately to stop ‘price gouging’. That would not be communism, or even socialism, just fair and ethical capitalism. Is such a concept beyond Australians because we are determined to follow the USA down the road to ultra-capitalism where wealth is the only aim, and if you are not fit and well, smart and lucky enough, you deserve poverty? That sounds 'medieval' to me and is not the Australia I want to live in.

5. Electricity companies responded positively to the wonderful initial uptake of solar panels in Australian homes, by paying people for the electricity they produced at the same rate as for the electricity that they used (provided by the electricity company rather than their own panels and possibly batteries). The solar panel uptake (and installation of household batteries) has continued apace with the help of government subsidies. Sadly, the electricity companies have changed their charging and reimbursement systems. For our household, where we generate four times the electricity we use, whereas we once received a cheque each month, we now receive a substantial bill. Complicated formula about time of day of electricity use, weather, etc. are being used to calculate electricity bills. To reduce the loss of electricity during its transmission from the production facility, electricity firms could install huge community batteries to cope with fluctuations in production and use of solar energy, rather than just relying on less-efficient small batteries in individual households. As use of energy-hungry AI increases, and with the move towards ‘net zero’ production of harmful (Global Warming-producing) gasses, this issue is of vastly increased importance and should be considered as a priority.

POLICY COMMENTS: The Australian Greens' policy on electricity and batteries involves making electricity more affordable through a transition to 100% renewable energy, public ownership of energy assets, and providing financial assistance for households and small businesses to install batteries and switch to clean energy. A review of economics for community (neighborhood) batteries could assist.

6. The combined Liberal and National parties (the Opposition) have developed a new policy to throw away their previous commitment to ‘net zero’ emissions by 2025. They say that (somehow) this still puts them in line with the Paris Accord. In order to satisfy the needs of their backers, they have declared that they are ‘agnostic’ with respect to the alternative ways of producing electricity. This is probably a calculated insult to the Greens, who they say promote solar and wind-based electricity production with religious fervor. However, if we examine this statement of agnosticism regarding electricity production method, it implies that they are not considering all the relevant characteristics associated with each particular production method. These include: the age of coal-powered stations and cost of building new ones which will be rapidly phased out; environment and Indigenous rights; sale of the Australian people’s gas overseas; relative costs of electricity production by different methods; the level of global warming gas production resulting from each method, per unit of electricity; and the location of electricity production sites relative to the places with the most need for electricity, to reduce cost of transport facilities and loss of energy.

POLICY COMMENTS: Australian Greens' electricity policy prioritises 100% renewable electricity by 2030, focusing on wind, solar, and storage, rather than remaining agnostic about production methods. There is an ever-increasing capacity to attack Coalition electricity policies, as they pander more and more to their industrial and country supporters.

7. University researchers and their PhD candidates provide a hugely valuable service to the Australian nation. Unfortunately, with the decrease in government funding and increased managerialism, Australian Universities are in crisis. Increasingly fewer staff are expected to teach and examine ever larger numbers of students, not to mention addressing their additional mental health needs. More and more PhD investigations involve multi-disciplines, or use inter-disciplinary methodologies and theories or even a trans-disciplinary approach where a specific meta-theory (e.g. phenomenology in the case of my own second PhD) is used as the mechanism to integrate methodologies and findings from many disciplines. Hence, at least two supervisors are required (from different disciplines) for each PhD candidate. At some stages this has meant that one senior academic I know (at Murdoch University) has been a co-supervisor for up to 25 PhD candidates at one time. The work load of having to read the writing of each student, discuss it with them and provide advice on the latest Australian and International research, is extremely time consuming. This makes life even harder for Australian academics. In addition, reduction of government funding to Australian universities has meant that academics have had to increasingly pay themselves the costs of attending Australian and overseas conferences to keep up with the latest ideas in their area of expertise. This is in addition to reading an increased number of publications. If Australia is to continue as an advanced technology and social justice country it needs to find more money for the University sector and do this quickly.

POLICY COMMENTS: Australian Greens propose making tertiary education free by abolishing all student debt and providing fee-free undergraduate university and TAFE courses. They also advocate for substantial investment in university research through increased block grants and funding for public research bodies, with a focus on public benefit and open-access publishing. Other policies include raising PhD stipends to the national minimum wage and improving access for disadvantaged students. It is important to fund academic wages properly and address ‘burn-out’ caused by increasing student numbers and decreasing numbers of staff.

These are just seven suggested ways that we can use the (extended) ‘rainforest’ metaphor to facilitate thinking about causes and effects of the way our world has grown in less than optimal ways and how it might be improved. These recommendations are not hyperbole, but based on true facts. Even this brief review has identified a number of general themes (common threads), that we might call ‘meta-policies’, because they operate across a number of different traditional policy fields (equating to 'entanglement'). Within our metaphor, these are pervasive influences, equivalent to parasitic vines.

These meta-policies (that Heidegger would call ‘topologies’) are tractable for study of my Phenomenology. They include:

1. Failure to recognise that minerals belong to the nation (i.e. its citizens), hence letting of exploration licences and consideration of potential mines are not carried out with the benefit of the nation as the first principle. Because of pressures on State and Territory governments (and instances of corruption), more protection is needed and probably greater control by Federal Agencies and Parliament;
2. Commercialisation of previous government services. This has led to ‘hollowing-out’ of government departments, meaning they have less capacity to provide informed advice to governments and businesses. Very highly paid generalist managers (who are often poor leaders) make important decisions beyond their expertise, on the inappropriate basis of ‘Business Principles’;
3. Decline in professional standards, especially regarding control of activities and fees. This has led to a great increase in the power of generalist managers and a decrease in effectiveness of the management of level of ‘fees for service’, which have generally produced much higher fees for use of professional people from many disciplines and for lots of everyday services, such as plumbing;
4. Failure to understand that Australia has a responsibility to undertake more than its share of greenhouse gas reduction, because we have more capacity to undertake such changes. Loving your country does not mean, for an ethical person, putting its self-interest above that of the whole world;
5. Disrespect for learning and the importance of research. A society dedicated to improvement must provide education to all its children and young adults at a price they can afford. It is obscene to pay our most valuable researchers a fragment of the salaries paid to business managers and other parasites feeding off the body politic;
6. Distortion of wages and superannuation. There has been a reasonable increase in minimum wages, however, top wages have become far too high. This also feeds excessive superannuation and government policies have favoured people using this extra money to buy second houses to rent at high returns. This leads to an economy of greed and selfishness.

This list has identified some of the current negative aspects of Australian Society. A political party needs to convince the voters that it has the ideas, commitment and ’intestinal fortitude’ to tackle them, despite the strong vested interests who are bound to loudly protest. For political parties (and some very thoughtful Independents) these meta-policies can be considered to constitute the ‘ethos’ of the party (or individual), and may be outlined in some foundational document. For instance, the Greens ‘ethos’ is said to rely on four pillars: Ecological Sustainability; Grassroots Participatory Democracy; Social Justice; and Peace and Non-violence. Perhaps this set is at too high a level of abstraction and the number should be increased to include other fundamental issues like Indigenous (First Peoples) Respect and Rights; Wage Justice, Universal Health Services and an Affordable Justice System, to make the general 'pillar' of Social Justice clearer.

It may be useful to review this ‘ethos’ from-time-to-time, if only to bring the language up to date. It is also important to communicate this ‘ethos’ to the public, who may become so entangled in the details of the policy rainforest to not ‘see the wood for the trees’. This is especially important when demographic changes make it even more difficult for Green candidates to win lower house seats. In theory, voters should be more interested in such higher-level meta-policies than the detail of any particular policy in the platform proposed by a party, as individual policies can change but the ethos should be more stable. Unfortunately, my fear is that the forces of the ‘parasitic vines’ are so entrenched in governmental systems, and personal networks of politicians and their industry ‘mates’, that change for the benefit of ‘the many’ is getting harder and harder.

My fellow Greens, I urge readers to re-double their efforts at investigating the complexities of the world’s governmental/social/financial systems so that effective and equitable responses can be determined. This will facilitate development of an ethos (meta-policies), policies and priorities to equip us to be the best possible ‘gardeners’ in the dense ‘rainforest’ that surrounds us. It will also assist us to review the appropriateness of existing aspects of ethos and policies, so we can ‘chop-out’ or ‘poison’ (metaphorically, not in reality) the worst individuals or corporations who are ‘parasitic vines’ within this article’s metaphorical ‘rainforest’. In the past this has been the task of violent revolutions. Can we manage to achieve the same result with a bloodless transition of Australian society, in line with the 4th pillar of our ethos?

Header photo: A dense rainforest _{Open access pexels-miriamespacio-254430.jpg}

_{[Opinions expressed are those of the author and not official policy of Greens WA]}