What are we being delivered to?

Liberalism is advancing at breakneck speed toward the greatest emptiness ever known to mankind. Consider the following two news items. It has been announced that there is to be a national curriculum for Australian schools. On what principles is this curriculum to be based?

According to a report in the Herald Sun there are to be three "key considerations" underpinning the entire development process. They are:

i) indigenous perspectives
ii) a commitment to sustainable patterns of living
iii) the skills, knowledge and understandings related to Asia and Australia's engagement.

So the education of Australian children is being planned by people who seemingly lack a love of learning or a passion for culture or science. What a view of Australia these "key considerations" reveal. The Australian mainstream culture is overlooked in favour of "indigenous perspectives". Flogging stuff to Asia matters. And there's a nod to environmental sustainability.

And that's it. What does this say to the average Australian child? That they don't embody a culture and tradition of their own but are to develop instead as Economic Man - albeit one who remembers to recycle stuff.

The second news item is far worse. It turns out that immigration has been running at an astonishingly high level. And the officials in charge justify this on the grounds that the economy is king. Australia is one big labour market.

Last year there were 171,318 permanent arrivals in Australia. There were also 47,780 New Zealanders who settled permanently and 657,124 migrants with the right to work. This adds up to 876,222 arrivals in a country with a population of about 22,000,000.

What is the purpose of this immigration? The Immigration Minister gave this explanation:

Senator Evans said immigration should be the nation's labour agency, meaning a continued high intake of migrants ... Decisions about who came to Australia would increasingly be left to employers.

Are we a nation or an economy? Do we want to develop economically and industrially or just grow by selling passports and having more people? Do we really want to sacrifice individual standards of living just to have a higher overall level of GDP?

My apologies to Australian readers who find all this demoralising. I expect that at first it is unavoidably demoralising. But I hope that there will be at least one positive effect, which is to show just how bankrupt Australian liberalism has become. There is nothing worthwhile animating it. The focus of government policy is not even on real economic development anymore; it's just about crude technocratic management of the economy to maintain overall growth of GDP.

Anyway, in response to the educrats and their "key considerations" and to Senator Evans and his view of Australia as an employer run labour agency, I penned the following protest ditty:

Our liberal elite is cold and grey
No culture at all, the economy holds sway
Over pallid minds and hollow souls
Dedicated to technocratic goals.

Lord deliver us from these bloodless ghosts
Shut up in bureaucratic posts
Let men with hearts less feeble, values less base
Favour us all and take their place.