Reasonable expectation is a key element in restoring common sense rights and responsibilities in an era of post Judeo-Christian woke, where “oppressed” victims loudly claim rights as a shield from responsibility.
Blaming someone else is a function of immaturity. It means someone else usually must pick up the tab for shortfall – in money, care, emotionally and/or goods. Well-intentioned Christian charity and government (taxpayer) benefits designed to help recipients over a tough patch tend to morph into long term dependency.
Lack of reasonable expectation that the most be made of the generosity to work towards greater self-reliance too easily turns into entitlement, resentment and activism for more and better. Bureaucrats and well-meaning compassionistas join the dance, claim headlines and agenda, expanding their own importance, while crowding out more important though less dramatic issues.
For instance, defence of the nation, even as China menaces from many fronts, has a hard time gaining intelligent traction and budget allocation in the public mind and Labor government agenda. At the same time giveaways in the cradle-to-grave “care” sector, Net Zero and Aboriginal programs are flush and expanding in incompetence and inefficiency without end.
Placing a sunset clause on all such programs would imply an expectation that, whatever the present need, individuals and groups are encouraged to become self-reliant and, where possible, contributors to the greater good. Valuable funds would then be available for more worthy pursuits.
Value of Expectation
Reasonable expectation, appropriate to age, stage and condition, has critical psychological value. Decades ago, I learned from a child psychologist at a Family conference that having expectations of children is essential to building self-esteem. How true that has been proven as ever-attentive parents hover over smaller families.
Expectations may be as simple as making a bed or a sandwich, washing up, emptying a lunch box at the end of the day, putting dirty clothes in the laundry basket or hanging up a towel, carrying your own bag, disposing of Maccas wrappers properly. These activities are learnings on the pathway to personal health and sanitation necessary for going out into the world at young adulthood. Good behaviour and kindness should be encouraged at home, school and community, being prepared to learn, share and help others.
Those to whom much has been given and for whom much has been done without expectation tend to lack confidence and self-esteem, experience poor mental health, have eating disorders, are prone to self-harm and self-absorption. Never having been expected to consider others, they lack the satisfying experience of doing, giving, achieving that lights the way to a more fulfilling life of learning, friendship and working relationships.
By gaining an alphabet label, a child may claim rights to an NDIS package. That can become a developmental trap encouraging eternal dependence at great expense. The NDIS gravy train has grown an audience with comparable bureaucracy, neither likely to relinquish rights, while responsibilities and costs fall to others. Amazing how seemingly good ideas turn into ever expanding bureaucrat-heavy gravy trains that have neither expectations nor end. Every hungry participant contributes.
Tragedy of the NDIS is the weight of expectation without responsibility, the gravy train that so many want, without expectation of exit. Any moves to tighten the program results in media outbursts of harm to the rights of the entitled. Never mind the long-suffering taxpayer, grifters remain free to continue.
Value of Responsibility
Responsibility is something that should continue to grow and adapt over a long lifetime. Sadly, many failing the responsibility in childhood carry the deficit forward into later years. Older people on “care” packages that are needed, can find themselves and their “carers” milking the system’s largesse, again at taxpayer expense.
While many comply with waste management obligations, elders can be just as derelict in their waste practices. Instead of responsibly cleaning containers before disposing in recycling bins, breaking down cardboard boxes and bagging food waste and dog droppings, responsibility tends to be left to others.
Where others do not assume the responsibility foisted on them, resentment and division arise along with stench and blowflies, risking everyone’s health, sanitation and environmental ambience. Rights without responsibilities become merely cover for laziness, selfishness and inconsideration of others, whether in an individual or group household.
Bureaucratic Responsibility
One could reasonably expect that expansion in the number and cost of the public sector at local, state and federal level, with attendant privileges like working from home, that the quality and speed of services would improve. Not so. Not public. Not service. Abiding by the first three rules of engagement: cover your backside, cover your backside and cover your backside. Any service that exists is to the “rules” not the people the rules are intended to serve.
A few examples of the Masters of the Impossible bureaucrats:
- Social Housing: From a social housing office flaunting four flags (Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, Australian and Palestinian), staff are dismissive of elderly resident concerns over regular outbursts of one mentally unstable tenant who engages in loud tirades of abuse, banging and smashing, and on one occasion setting fire to the place, causing police, ambulance and fire brigade to be called repeatedly. Instead of dealing responsibly with legitimate concerns of people neither authorized nor capable of dealing with such disturbance, the public sector response was to renovate the unit at great expense, then return the tenant to the same unit. Within half an hour of returning, the tenant resumed where he left off. Rinse, repeat. Waiting for death of proponents or cause is the bureaucratic solution. Sure beats having to lift a finger of responsibility.
- Cats: Neither the housing authority, city council or animal rescue will act to resolve the issue of a woman who refuses to get cats de-sexed. Consequently, almost twenty have been produced in two and a half years, with new litters appearing regularly to destroy the bird life and lizards, foul the surrounds and mewl for food. Valiant attempts made by neighbours to trap cats and take to animal rescue are overtaken by nature and irresponsible stupidity of the selfish “owner” and dereliction of responsibility by authorized public servants.
- Housing: In two areas of housing, public servants demonstrate gross irresponsibility. First is simple: length of time that local government takes to approve basic renovations, buildings, the extortionate costs involved and failure to release land for housing development. Second is federal government and university bureaucrats’ reliance on immigration numbers (not quality) to flood the market to fill their own coffers, burdening renters with higher rents, squeezing first home buyers out of the housing market.
- Policing: Disparity in policing has been evident between treatment of protesters against COVID lockdowns and “Palestinian” antisemitic rallies since 9 October 2023, as victims of flawed policy were expected to carry the responsibility for unfair mandates not of their choosing and for which a high personal price had to be paid.
- Aboriginal: Even as I write, high profile Aboriginal activists, Megan Davis and Pat Anderson, are berating government, bureaucracy and everyone except Aborigines themselves for failure to “close the gap” in indigenous attainment. The Albanese government response is to allocate even more $billions to a ‘work for the dole’ scheme to train indigenous workers. The program has been tried previously and cancelled. Sentiment is right: expectation that trainees turn up to work and learn rather than ‘sit-down money’. Missing component is a willing and enduring response from Aborigines to improve their own lot.
In each of these examples, highly paid and privileged public sector employees fail to own responsibility for the job for which they are being paid and are reasonably expected to do. Accountability is a foreign country. Their failure, together with shallow political purpose, loads responsibility for delivering acceptable outcomes to people who may be neither equipped nor funded to do so.
What is evident from the few examples is that advancing rights over responsibilities at a personal level tends to be a multiplier at an agency level, both shamelessly grifting on taxpayers at a rate that is unsustainable. Each of us shares responsibility for the decline in morality and manners that diminishes our society.
When unaccountable bureaucrats dance in concert with irresponsible public, prospects for taxpayers and sensible people are dire and onerous.
Fragmentation of individuals, groups and the country is inevitable, with high social and economic costs. Small wonder social disharmony is rife as predictable under the circumstances. Much like raising children with the expectation they be responsible, for themselves firstly, and hopefully able to extend their caring to a broader sector of the community. Less expensive and more satisfying in the short and long term.