What are "rights" & "responsibilities"?
Viability? - Sustainability? - Politics?
As globalisation proceeds, low skilled jobs will move to low wage economies. This process will accelerate until a balance of incomes and employment opportunities exists throughout the world. While this is a good thing, it also means that unemployment will be more evenly spread.
It is inconceivable that the current welfare provisions will be sustainable, yet people have a right to life. While even dumb animals can feed and shelter themselves, we have been made entirely reliant on the economy for our very survival. This limits our ability to make free and democratic choices, putting undue economic conditions on the right to life itself.
A market economy, for all its benefits, tends to commodify everything. Fundamentally the economy has totally commodified all land by which people traditionally might feed and shelter themselves, whatever their skill level. This commodification has also led to an unsustainable neglect of responsibilities to the land, because the market place determines interactions with the land rather than the principles of human rights and responsibilities.
By specifying exactly what one’s responsibilities would be in using the land to feed and shelter oneself, we would see there was plenty of sustainable work to do for anyone wishing to take up their right and responsibilities. Regardless of skill levels, with the proper support people could be much better able to look after their wellbeing.
The government is the only body capable of maintaining this opportunity. Centrelink, Dept of Housing and TAFE are already set up with the necessary structures for support and accountability in regard to rights and responsibilities.
For anyone who would exercise their right for its intended purpose of feeding and sheltering themselves in the most sustainable ways known, we need to describe the right to land and the responsibilities that go with that right. Only then will it be possible to protect rights, provide free and democratic choice and restore social, economic and environmental balance.
There are many thousands of Australians who, because they have no marketable role are marginalised. For the most part, these people are not totally incapacitated, it’s the fact that they may find themselves marginalised, often without housing security or a role that leads to problems.
If they had housing security, some might willingly take up the challenge of developing and applying skills for a neighbourhood that works, if by doing so they could find a meaningful role and a real sense of belonging in their communities.
Fresh food from a community garden or access to a shared resource like a box trailer could also be incentives for people who need to stretch their dollars further.
Where competitive employment and welfare dependency has marginalised, an opportunity like this could be a new way forward for some, liberating that natural inclination to look for improvement once we have control over the basics.
Housing Security that Supports Participation
Core to this idea is the integration of neighbourhood participation with a person’s natural right to establish a secure home.
To provide the rental housing security for this commitment to the neighbourhood, government would be the ideal landlord … marginalisation and the betterment of neighbourhoods also being government concerns.
Needed By All
A socially and environmentally sustainable neighbourhood that works is not only needed by marginalised people looking for security and social participation, it is also a critically important neighbourhood culture that Australia is largely missing.
With the rental security provided by public housing and some simple grass roots supports, even small groups of people could make all the difference in any neighbourhood. Even if other people in the neighbourhood have no time to participate, they would still benefit from a more engaged and vibrant neighbourhood.
Engaging people in neighbourhood activity would have very important social, environmental and economic benefits for all Australians.
Change Centrelink’s Activity Test
and help make public housing a real asset in any neighbourhood!!!
Viability? - Sustainability? - Politics?
As globalisation proceeds, low skilled jobs will move to low wage economies. This process will accelerate until a balance of incomes and employment opportunities exists throughout the world. While this is a good thing, it also means that unemployment will be more evenly spread.
It is inconceivable that the current welfare provisions will be sustainable, yet people have a right to life. While even dumb animals can feed and shelter themselves, we have been made entirely reliant on the economy for our very survival. This limits our ability to make free and democratic choices, putting undue economic conditions on the right to life itself.
A market economy, for all its benefits, tends to commodify everything. Fundamentally the economy has totally commodified all land by which people traditionally might feed and shelter themselves, whatever their skill level. This commodification has also led to an unsustainable neglect of responsibilities to the land, because the market place determines interactions with the land rather than the principles of human rights and responsibilities.
By specifying exactly what one’s responsibilities would be in using the land to feed and shelter oneself, we would see there was plenty of sustainable work to do for anyone wishing to take up their right and responsibilities. Regardless of skill levels, with the proper support people could be much better able to look after their wellbeing.
The government is the only body capable of maintaining this opportunity. Centrelink, Dept of Housing and TAFE are already set up with the necessary structures for support and accountability in regard to rights and responsibilities.
For anyone who would exercise their right for its intended purpose of feeding and sheltering themselves in the most sustainable ways known, we need to describe the right to land and the responsibilities that go with that right. Only then will it be possible to protect rights, provide free and democratic choice and restore social, economic and environmental balance.
There are many thousands of Australians who, because they have no marketable role are marginalised. For the most part, these people are not totally incapacitated, it’s the fact that they may find themselves marginalised, often without housing security or a role that leads to problems.
If they had housing security, some might willingly take up the challenge of developing and applying skills for a neighbourhood that works, if by doing so they could find a meaningful role and a real sense of belonging in their communities.
Fresh food from a community garden or access to a shared resource like a box trailer could also be incentives for people who need to stretch their dollars further.
Where competitive employment and welfare dependency has marginalised, an opportunity like this could be a new way forward for some, liberating that natural inclination to look for improvement once we have control over the basics.
Housing Security that Supports Participation
Core to this idea is the integration of neighbourhood participation with a person’s natural right to establish a secure home.
To provide the rental housing security for this commitment to the neighbourhood, government would be the ideal landlord … marginalisation and the betterment of neighbourhoods also being government concerns.
Needed By All
A socially and environmentally sustainable neighbourhood that works is not only needed by marginalised people looking for security and social participation, it is also a critically important neighbourhood culture that Australia is largely missing.
With the rental security provided by public housing and some simple grass roots supports, even small groups of people could make all the difference in any neighbourhood. Even if other people in the neighbourhood have no time to participate, they would still benefit from a more engaged and vibrant neighbourhood.
Engaging people in neighbourhood activity would have very important social, environmental and economic benefits for all Australians.
Change Centrelink’s Activity Test
and help make public housing a real asset in any neighbourhood!!!