Let's focus on responsibilities

THE other night a friend who works in a rather grim part of the world called around; at least it is grim in the sense that not everyone has enough to eat or can read or write, and the women still carry water on their heads after being sold into marriage at age 12 or thereabouts. But the scenery is great.

My friend had to take detour on her way back before Christmas via Bangkok and found herself in the middle of the airport blockade by anti-government protesters. She came away from the experience convinced that if there is another war or some similar catastrophe, Australians are, in a word, stuffed. The spirit of Anzac is thin on the ground as the dawn of 2009 approaches.

"When's the Government gonna send a plaaaane?" was the usual opening whinge among those stranded after protesters forced the airport to close. To which the unfailingly polite Australian embassy staff would reply through gritted teeth that it wasn't usual practice to send a plane to evacuate a group of grounded tourists who, if they really had thought about it, would be better off staying on the beach at Phi Phi Island.

Of course, there were people who had run out of medicines and one woman even went into labour, but Australia does more for its stranded citizens than almost any other country in the world, as several Shanahan backpackers can attest. This includes giving them money when they are so broke they can't pay their airport tax.

The Aussie whinge has been around forever but is it getting worse and it is a symptom of something bigger. Modern Australians live in a cultural bubble. They have lost the art of self-reliance and think the Government has magically to fix things when they're overseas.

It wasn't always so. Unlike a certain class of English who thought abroad was "unutterably bloody" and had the good sense to stay home (unfortunately no longer, as the Spanish, French and Italians can attest), we Australians always loved abroad. But now we like it only as long as we can do our Australian thing on our own terms, without intrusion into our well-laid bubble plans.

But the whinge psychology is bigger than the Aussie tourist. It spills out into Australian expectations of the role of government as big daddy. At home we are turning into an arch-nanny state. How many times have you heard that plaintive cry "The Government should fix it" about almost everything the Government has no control over, from natural catastrophes such as droughts to well and truly human-made problems such as the divorce rate.

But then, the present Government rather likes to set itself up as our big daddy. After all, the Prime Minister thinks (or pretends he thinks) that the weather is a "moral issue". As for divorce, you get seemingly sensible people such as Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner on television saying, "We will be hearing a lot more about relationships in government policy." There is even talk of introducing something called the happiness index.

However, no other part of the social web is as subject to government meddling as the family and the care and education of children. Certainly that is one area where the Government can and should provide basic affordable services and financial aid. But the family is meant to be its own social services unit.

Some people, especially media commentators, have forgotten this. So when ABC Learning Centres, the childcare company, went bust this year, parents were demanding the Government bail it out. ABC was allowed too much dominance of the market in the first place. It flourished with government subsidies. But at the risk of sounding like "I told you so", very few were complaining then about the childcare subsidies that led to the growth and ultimate demise of companies such as ABC.

No, and now they just want the Government to prop up it up so they can get guaranteed service. Child care is not a right and Julia Gillard isn't game to say the obvious: child care is a parental and family responsibility, not the Government's.

Australians appear overwhelmingly inclined to take less responsibility: for our children, our old people, ourselves. We are our own chief responsibility, not that of the Government. Now we hear a great deal about the ultimate nanny state illusion. a new charter of rights, but nothing about a charter of responsibilities.

We live in the most blessed country on earth and we have inherited a great tradition. As free-born, relatively rich, English-speaking Australians, we have every right anyone has wanted in the history of the world. Our political life and society are the culmination of the benevolent vision of the great 19th-century English social reformers and of the colonial founding fathers. Australians don't need any more rights, especially phony ones. It is about time we cultivated a few responsibilities.

I would like to thank all the people who have written to me this year. I get a lot of mail and I have not answered as much of it as I should. I was particularly touched by the huge number of supportive letters and emails I received after appearing on ABC television's Q&A show. To answer one rather persistent query: yes, I was nervous, and yes, I do also have a stutter, an impediment that has dogged me all my life. But that is a matter for another column. Happy new year.