"Tolerant" Pete A Figment Of The Imagination He Wishes He Had
Harold Hark
19 July 2003

I think we're all up to here with the term "social capital". It's just another Orwellian buzzword, like "compassionate conservative", for EconoRats to divert our attention with as they herd us into our feudal pens.

According to US political scientist Robert Putnam, social capital is thus defined: "Social Capital refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit."A noble idea, but in the hands of right wing politicians it is simply used to squeeze the life out of the lower end of town. As Christopher Scanlon says, "Working 60 to 70 hours a week or moving constantly to find new work is hardly a firm basis for developing deep bonds with others." And: "The concern with social capital promises a filleted vision of community, in which the complexity and depth that comes with abiding bonds with others is colonised for its economic utility. It costs nothing and promises the world." That's right, it's bullshit.

Social Capital is a fave of Peter Costello's these days. That's enough to make a sun-bleached turd in a dried out paddock wary of the term. This is the Costello who retaliated against John Howard's decision to stay on by telling us he was going to start speaking out for a tolerant society. Subsequent polls showed that zero out of minus one people believed him.

It may not have been a ruse and he might actually have believed it at the moment. But a few moments later The Great Idea scampered away, the borrowed fragment of his brother's humanity that it was.

So his final cop out comes as no surprise. Speaking to the Sydney Institute: Let's revive a sense of society--how about that for a doublespeak title?--he confirmed his castration at the able hands of the Illiberal Party's toughest ever castrato, John "I never had 'em in the first place" Howard. Like Ruddock before him, Costello has finally succumbed to the Silent Majority's nutless Svengali.

Pete is still spruiking voluntaryism to take the place of what used to be called employment. "Look after your communities on your own folks, because we won't." Simple. And he even offered a list of places we can go to give of our services after we've worked that 60 or 70 hours a week.

Most people have reacted with disgust, but get a load of the following rubbish, sent to the letters page of The Age, and count the times the writer says "social capital". Best of all, dig what he does for a living!

We have a tradition in Australian politics of thinking that governments should solve all social and economic problems. Treasurer Peter Costello is saying what few politicians say: governments cannot solve every problem, and nor should they try (Opinion, 17/7). Governments cannot build communities or social trust.

But governments do profoundly influence how much social trust and social capital we have, and very often the way they do things restricts social capital. Every time a government introduces a service-delivery program without thinking first about how communities can change things through their own voluntary collective initiative, our dependence on government is increased and the decline of social capital is accelerated.

Some commentators would like Peter Costello to speak about reconciliation and refugees. I hope he doesn't join this predictable chorus, and continues to speak about social capital and its radical implications for what governments and citizens expect of each other.
Vern Hughes, development manager, Social Entrepreneurs Network, North Melbourne

Stalin would have loved this sucker!

See Andrew Dyson's Cornered for a miniature treatise on Costello's idea of volunteering.

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