What is our why? Reclaiming our sense of purpose as a country
Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash
In June 2022 Lily Spencer attended Progress Leaders, a gathering of senior leaders and CEOs from across civil society, hosted by Australian Progress.
This is an edited version of her closing remarks.
What is our ‘why’?
What is our why as a country? Our sense of purpose? How do we measure our success?
If you had asked me this two weeks ago, I would have said the government’s reply would be something along the lines of ‘managing the economy and keeping our borders strong’ — while we ricochet from one crisis to the next.
But we’ve turned a massive page this election in our country’s story. As a nation we’ve rejected the old political order, but not the ‘why’ that underpins it, and we have yet to embed the new at scale.
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If that sounds like an ambitious ask, we need to remember it’s been done before. Many decades ago, evangelists for neoliberalism gave us a new vision for reform: the almighty ‘freedom of choice’ based on the notion of empowered individuals competing in a ‘free market’ with minimal state interference.
They relentlessly promoted their vision as the true path to progress and happiness, and seized on moments of crisis to create change. We are still emerging from their legacy of policies — including tax cuts, gutting of the public service and anti-union agendas.
But covid, fires, floods, and now this election. We too, have been through our portals of crisis, and now we’ve come through the other side of a transformative election into yet uncharted territory.
What if we can take this opportunity... in all its ongoing peril and possibility, to galvanise around a new ‘why’, that speaks to universal needs and human motivations?
What if we can find a way to articulate that the individual issues we care about are really just pieces of the same solution?
In 2020 through to 2021, Australia reMADE embarked on an 18 month qualitative research project, asking Australians of all walks of life what they wanted to be available for everyone, regardless of whether it makes someone a profit to provide it. We gave these things a name, calling them forms of ‘public good.’
People we spoke to from a huge diversity of backgrounds, socioeconomic circumstances and political views — they all got this idea of public goods and the public good, and ran with it. They all mentioned the same handful of things they wanted for everyone: housing, jobs, healthcare, education, access to nature and access to the internet.
But then, the conversations went somewhere even deeper — to three underlying drivers — three ‘whys’ behind every ‘what’. Want to know what they were?
First of all, connection. People expressed the drive to connect with each other and with their place;
Secondly, care. People expressed the need to care and be cared for and; and finally
Contribution. People expressed a deep need to contribute, locally and nationally, to who we are as a nation.
Connection, care, contribution —we’ve come to understand these as the building blocks of public good itself.
So, can the ‘why’ of public good make the old why of neoliberalism obsolete?
I don’t know. Changing paradigms takes time.
Certainly public good is a fairly boring, innocuous term that has little baggage, and much opportunity. Public good is not just something you have; it’s something you do — for the benefit of everyone. It appeals to people from left and right alike, and offers a subtle but powerful antidote to ‘market first’ fundamentalism.
And the good news is, you in this room are already champions of it.
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Ending white supremacy and all forms of discrimination is a public good.
Strong action for a safe climate is a public good;
A strong democracy with integrity is a public good;
Universal healthcare and quality education are public goods;
A reconciling nation enshrining a First Nations Voice is a public good;
And a robust social safety net is not just better for the private individuals whose lives it transforms; it’s a public good for everyone and the kind of society we want to live in (as someone who comes from a country where tent cities are now under every freeway overpass, I know this to be true).
So how do we advance an agenda for the public good? We’ve talked about some great ideas here at Progress Leaders, and I just want to leave you with a few.
We talk about the public good. Use the words “public good,” or words to that effect (common good, public interest, etc), in connection to our work, our purpose, and to our country’s sense of purpose.
We embed Connection, Care and Contribution into our language, our agendas and our ways of working. That means building in time and space connection, care, contribution and resourcing them as best we can, as we’ve done here at Progress.
We hold high expectations of government publicly, talking about what good government can and should do — not just what it’s failed to do.
We reclaim the purpose of our institutions — universities, charities, public service (and ideally, business)— renewed to serve the public good.
We stick to universalism. Everyone means everyone — no matter who you are, where you live, where you come from or how much money you make, because that’s the society we want to live in.
And finally, we become as confident championing the invisible infrastructure of public good — such as the time, resources and spaces we all need to connect, care and contribute — as we are in calls for greater public transport, hospitals and schools, roads and internet.
This is our time, not just to fight the old model, but to build and embed the new model that makes the old model obsolete.
It’s our job now to invest in the ideas, campaigns and coalitions that take people with us, normalise the bold and create space for political leaders to step into. Because progress isn’t static, and one win is never enough.
Thank you.
For a more in-depth discussion of the issues raised here, please see our article ‘piece’s of the same solution: reimagining the public good’, in the Australian Quarterly Magazine.
Full public good report—Reclaiming our Purpose: It’s time to talk about the public good
LILIAN SPENCER
Lilian Spencer is the Communications Lead for Australia reMADE. She believes that the secret to change is to, ‘focus your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.’
