"the new normal"?
Barry Jones speech, at the Sydney Bioethics Seminar 23November, 2005, could have been talking in parallel about the aviation Regulatory Review process.
Dr Jones said Australia faces many serious issues which need urgent public debate but there was an unhealthy silence. (from Australia’s academics). “Are they afraid they might offend people or make enemies which might affect their careers if they speak out?” he asked.
The former Labor politician and Member for Lalor in Victoria (1977-98) was just as scathing in his criticism of Australian politics which he said has been transformed and manipulated by advertising and public relations. “Parliament has lost much of its moral authority and parliamentary speeches make no difference to the outcome of policy decisions,” Dr Jones said.
“Wedge politics is used to divide and rule by finding fault lines in society - us versus them. It employs democratic forms in an oppressive way.”
The distortion of language whereby the suicide of immigration detainees becomes ‘attention-seeking incidents’ is particularly insidious and reinforced by the media’s preoccupation with infotainment and trivia.
“In the United States, in the age of the ‘new normal’, policies and appointments are now ‘faith-based’ not evidence-based. The moral basis for action has been replaced by opportunism and adventurism. Lying is now standard operating procedure.
"Although formal levels of education are far higher than ever before and access to information has increased expotentially in the past thirty years, the political process has been deformed by appeals to emotion, especially fear, and to immediate economic self interest. The public service has been increasingly politicised, universities have adopted the cult of managerialism, the media is preoccupied with 'infotainment', and public debate is dominated by the black art of 'spin', in which the truth of a complex proposition (going to war in Iraq, stem cells, Industrial Relations reform, climate change, evolution, Knowledge Nation) is less significant than how simple arguements for and against can be 'sold'.