Improving a Society

It takes a great leader to show the way. He may not have all the answers. But who has?
What did he do?

He said sorry to the indigenous people for their “lost generation”. He selects the first female Governor-General for the country.
He commits himself to the job from day one. He says to the people that his ministers are going to work hard, even on public holidays. He made no real promise but he tells the people that he shares their pains and aspirations.
He makes large symbolic changes. He takes his cabinet meetings on the road, throwing the first day meeting to the public in a country town, so that the people can pose questions directly to his cabinet, their government. And he is going to hold such meetings all over the country. The people can have their say. Isn’t it a wonderful change? He engages the people.
He makes big decisions that previous leaders had stagnated on. Without hesitation, he made big commitments to solve problems that had been nagging the country for a long while – the water problem, the relationship between state and federal governments, and so on. These are decisions that clearly demonstrated that he is a man of action, not a talker.

Today and tomorrow, he chairs a National 2020 Summit for a selected group of 1,000 people representing all sectors of society to discuss the future for the country. The people can get involved in deciding the country’s future. The people must have their say. It is too important to leave it to the parliamentarians. In announcing the summit idea, he said (as quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald) “We therefore open the doors of this great parliament to the nation’s best and brightest brains in order to harness those ideas to shape the nation’s long term future…I think it is time for a new approach”.

An edited version of a speech he made to the Sydney Institute on April 16, 2008 was published in the Sydney Morning Herald. Let me quote from his “broad outline of the government’s vision for the nation’s future”.

“Part of our vision is to give every opportunity to individuals to provide for their own future by rewarding hard work, enterprise and success, while part of our vision also goes to a contrasting (but at the same time reinforcing) sense of social responsibility……
I believe that as a nation we need to come together around clear, long-term goals for the Australia of 2020 and beyond. These objectives should be ambitious. Excessive caution and a fear of failure should not hold us back…….
In the century ahead, it’s not unreasonable for Australia to aspire to be the best place on earth to live, to gain an education, to work and to raise a family….
We can also be a nation with a sense of wider purpose, not a nation turned in to itself and occupied only with its own future……
We can either drift into the future or we can take hold of the future with our own hands to shape the future, to seize the day”.

Wouldn’t it be nice for all countries to have leaders who are committed to improving their society? And to lead the way in making their society a better place to live in.
Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia, you deserve the kudos. You have shown great leadership. I hope you will also include the poorer nations in your “wider purpose” for Australia to engage the world.

Richer societies, such as Australia, must not forget the rest of the world who are poorer. That should be part of the national conscience. Only then can Australia regard itself as a good society.