A lot of people do not understand Independent Australia — managing editor David Donovan corrects the record.
It is unusual for a publication to be truly Independent — to not have a tendency towards the left nor the right, but simply to have a fervent love for the nation, without any overarching ideology, apart from an unswerving commitment to democracy; a desire for the people to decide – not the shadowy elites – about the future of our nation.
When people ask us what our political stance is, we normally say:
“We are neither left, nor right, we just believe in doing what is right.”
Of course, we have some core values, you can see them on our ‘About IA' page.
To summarise, we are in favour of the underdog in their battle against entrenched power from the bossy elites — the big miners, the banks, the rich end of town, the 1 per cent that tell everyone else when to jump. We rail against their domination of our political system — and for this we have been labelled as lefties. In fact, one commentator even called us “ultra-leftist subversives” (whatever that means) and yesterday – by a particularly egregious example of the sort of corporatist bovver boy the Liberal Party is famous for – we were called “hard left”.
We are not hard left, medium left, or even soft and cuddly left. Actually, we believe that capitalism is, if matched by sensible regulation and a fair system that tempers corporate excess, the best way to distribute resources in our society and provide appropriate incentives and individual freedoms.
As for the subversive bit, well ... as a campaigning journalistic enterprise, we reserve the right to be subversive. If we aren’t being subversive, you might as well read the establishment press — your worldview will be thoroughly safe from challenge there.
People think that because we write negative articles about Tony Abbott fairly frequently — we must be anti the Liberal Party. Actually, we write those articles about Tony Abbott because we feel that he, in particular, is a dangerously destructive and deceitful incompetent, who shouldn’t be allowed to run his local pub’s meat tray raffle, let alone a $1.4 trillion economy. In fact, we applaud the Liberal Party for some of their democratic traits; for example, they actually allow MPs to vote against party lines in Parliament without risking expulsion from the Party — a policy that the staunchly undemocratic Labor Party won’t allow, and would do well to adopt. It is just such a shame that the Liberals have forgotten their liberalism and decided to install as their leader a dangerous and regressive ideologue — one who may even be more appalling than his puppet-master, John Winston Howard.
Yes, we abhor Tony Abbott — and almost everything the bigoted bully believes in. But we have no particular problem with Malcolm Turnbull.
We have been called “crypto-Greens” because we are interested in preserving Australia’s natural environment and the health and wellbeing of the Australian people. Yes, we don’t like the way that people with lots of money and corporate influence want Australia to be the world’s handy quarry – or nuclear waste dump – rather than the world’s innovation capital, or scientific research centre, or IT development hub. But we think of the Greens as just another sectionally interested political party. We don't much like Australian political parties — whatever their stripe. We know they generally just seek power and influence for their support base.
It drives us spare that we Australians — an urbanised, highly educated and talented nation — have been pigeonholed now, somehow, as the world’s navvy — consigned, it seems, for the indefinite future to digging stuff out of the ground for other countries' manufactories, or putting CSG wells deep into our backyards to potentially poison our water resources for evermore, and then perversely sending 80 per cent of the profits overseas.
We say, let’s look beyond the next election, or the next business cycle, or the next to ten or twenty or even thirty years into the real future. We want our leaders to lead — and to do some deep thinking about where the honest, sustainable, opportunities lie. We don't want some ethically flaccid corporate lackey – like Abbott indubitably is – to mealy-mouth the words of his major campaign donors – the big bosses – that are based on nothing more than their fervent passion for ever overfilling their ultra-expandable wallets, whilst they sell our children's futures down the river — or to the Chinese — whatever fetches more on the open market at the time.
We are Australians.
Let us all show some pride in what we can do as a nation. Let’s stop selling ourselves short. We can do much more than just play sport. We can do much, much, more than just digging. And if IA is not right about that – which we sincerely doubt – well, if we leave the stuff in the ground, it will be worth even more into the future. And so our childrens' futures are safe, whatever happens.
Independent Australia believes in an independent Australian nation — a nation that looks to the future, and respects the past. A land of kin, of brothers and sisters, of fellows in the spirit of the earth, where all acknowledge the awesome majesty of our great land. One where we look enrich our culture and values by looking beyond our colonial heritage to the land in which we live — and so to the true spiritual owners of this land. IA asks all Australians to become real Australians – true Indigenous Australians, each and every one of us – not to try to carry on this facile, feeble, facsimile of a distant and increasingly irrelevant European tradition — that itself is falling apart.
We must go our own way and find ourselves.
And that is what Independent Australia is all about.
Not left, not right, not black, nor white — Australians all, bound to this country and bound for a better chapter in our collective history.
We love Australia, we hope you love this country too – as well as Independent Australia, because we love you!
IA — Independent Australia — Investigating Australia — speaking truth to power — suddenly, news has a conscience.
(This story was originally published in November 2011 and was last republished on 31 May 2012, but is equally as valid today — exactly one year on.)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
