If it still exists …
The following submission is written in full sincerity to be considered at Per Capita Australia’s “Community” Tax summit as a follow on to a debate I had with Emma Dawson, director of PCA, on LinkedIn on 6 Feb 2025 (my post was removed that evening for reasons and in a manner which remain a mystery to me). I won’t pay to attend this summit because I have participated already in too many performative political gatherings where the outcomes have been carefully cultivated and curated, and I would be embarrassed to join that lineup for very obvious reasons (note, I am certain that all of these people are decent human beings but this lack of diversity in contemporary Australia is truly shocking).
I’m going to lay this strategy out in a very specific manner by way of anecdotes, personal experience and observation so as to make it obvious to understand because Extreme capitalism has cast a long shadow which obscures much for many.
When I was a child growing up in North Queensland in the 70s I played footy with all my schoolmates and the father of one of my mates was our coach – he was Johnny Fry. Now Mr Fry worked in the railway and he knocked off work early twice a week to be at school by 3.30pm so that we could finish training and be home by around 5 to do our homework, have a little down time playing and eating dinner with our families, and getting to bed at a reasonable time for primary school children.
Yes, I lived in a small town, but there were adults all over town doing the same thing, and I can only believe that their employers all understood and respected this as a contribution to our community. Probably the lack of lighting facilities back then meant that this was accepted as much in the city as in the country.
In other words, the role of contributing to young peoples’ development was highly respected within communities – as one of many ways to contribute – including by employers, and schedules tailored to what is best for the wellbeing of our children was unquestioned.
This was supported by families because there were lots of parents able to collect children – yes, mainly women (if that makes you bristle, please remain calm – this is not a ‘Tradwife’ argument) – because few families had both parents working 40+ hours a week.
Fast forward to now and what is the situation?
From my family’s experiences, right from under 9s in soccer, and just about any other team sport you can think of, training times all revolve around what suits working parents so that training always commenced after 5pm, often running till after 7pm and sometimes much later.
As a children-centric family with a full time home parent, with our family meal time early (soon after my wife arrived home from work) and the children in bed by 7.30pm routinely while in primary school, we always found this situation challenging.
We also found it confronting and even saddening to attend events at school, like parent-teachers night, seeing children running around the school playground at 5.30pm still in their uniforms having been there since 7.30am and yet to be collected from out of school hours care.
Now as I’ve said in my writing, I am grateful to live in a society where we have choices on how we live our lives, but a good portion of my writing at MacroEdgo was devoted to explaining that there are other ways for families to live a rewarding life, and why my experience of being a stay at home Dad of now 20 years suggested to me that was better for families and societies. (See “Great Reset Era Theme: Investing in family and community” which is actually excerpted from “Full Thoughts On Prof. Michael Sandel’s Meritocracy Discourse: Pt 2“)
I only attended one parents and citizens meeting while my children were at primary school because it’s futility quickly became obvious. Even though I was in the school grounds every day, sometimes for a few hours, and at every sporting event, I didn’t recognise any of the parents on the parents’ committee. They were all full time working parents and it was clear that they were most concerned with ensuring that the school resources were used to achieve their own goals rather than those of the broad school community. For example, one point of strong contention with the Principal was over their insistence that the groundsman be made to come in midway through the Christmas holiday period to mow the entire school grounds because their children would be attending the vacation care facilities (and they took a lot of placating from the Principal that it simply was not possible given departmental directives on leave).The group controlling the presentation of interests from the family community were in reality representing one small fraction of the school community – the professional working parents – and they were well equipped to do so given their familiarity with networking and lobbying for influence.
This is how I see much of the advocacy for families in the Australian political landscape. And perhaps that is why those controlling the ‘interests’ of the mainstream Left are at least as reluctant to adopt authentic representative democracy as those on the Right.
Now I can understand how a group that has experienced historical disadvantage, at least on the basis of one trait, that being gender, could find it challenging to change tack now that it would appear they are in a position to gain privilege from a long period of intense lobbying.
Nonetheless, this debate over facilitating more parents to work more hours – not that it was ever really had in this society because both mainstream right and left parties adopted the same neoliberal ‘aspiration’ narrative in search of productivity and economic growth – is rapidly being made moot by innovation and technological development in terms of artificial intelligence and autonomous mechanisation.
Regardless of whether you believe in the workaholic ethos with a ‘side-hustle’ or two to ‘succeed’ and be a ‘winner’, and you’re actually refractory to burnout, this reality is going to catch up with you. Even budding Xcaps out of ivy league institutions who have entered the shrines of Extreme capitalism on Wall St, New York, are learning this, after having glimpsed the extreme privilege that previous cohorts had vacuumed up for themselves, as they have been cast out and are trying to scrape together a living as financial influencers on YouTube and elsewhere.
Society is changing rapidly and political and economic strategies aimed at solving the problems of 20 years ago will rapidly look even more farcical than they do now.
For example, as some proponents from the CALD community highlight, equity measures that don’t foster inclusion but actually do the opposite, because justice and compassion are not the real driving forces, reveal how the already privileged are using DEI to maintain status. The reason why I do not join with others authentically in search of justice speaking out against DEI is because I know that by far the most ‘popular’ reasoning against it is borne of xenophobia, and that the real problem is not with DEI but the way DEI has been implemented and practised to maintain especially white privilege. A pile on risks setting things back even further. (The same reason why the Referendum for the First Nations Voice to Parliament failed and worse, leading ‘No’ First Nations voices suggesting colonialisation was positive for them pushed back recent progress.)
Which brings me to the constituency of the speakers assembled for this summit in their stale and pale homogeneity which is entirely self-evident to the point of being embarrassing in this day and age. (Note that even though Jimmy Kimmel had slightly fewer invited guests, there was actually ONE person of obvious Asian descent around his table).
I have been involved with and sincerely contributed to enough political ‘consultation’ processes over the past 2 decades to know that they are typically performances to arrive at predetermined outcomes. At a guess the predetermined outcomes of this gathering revolve mainly around female equality which in this system of Extreme capitalism essentially amounts to policies aimed at facilitating parents working more hours, thus leading to more time where families are apart.
If that is accurate, this summit will be a pointless attempt to solve the problems that should have been solved decades ago rather than address the real issues that we confront now, and if they were acknowledged and addressed could make a genuine contribution to society therby placing the progressive Left at the centre of political debate for all of the right reasons.
Besides failing to address racism, the mainstream Left has let itself down in being wedded to this ridiculous protestant theology that idle hands do the devil’s work leading to neoliberal concepts of unending aspiration for more and more – fancier status symbols of privilege, both immovable (large, modern homes) and mobile (expensive, new cars and clothing).
‘Dignity of work’ bunkum has in part sponsored the proliferation of bullshit jobs, as the self-interest (greed is good credo) of Extreme capitalism pervades every workplace, and everyone observes our political and social leaders building empires and privilege, looking out for Number 1, encouraging everyone else to co-opt any resources at their own disposal – including human capital – to work towards their own goals rather than bottom line goals of organisations whether they be for profit or not (see, for example, “If Quiet Quitting Results in Reduced Production – A Big ‘IF’ – Then It Was Production That Never Was Paid For“).
Already a lot of work is pointless. If we cannot accept the need to Reset to a different model of sustainable living, where we work less but more meaningful hours and where we identify more broadly with our full roles in society, then the mental health crises of adult and child anxiety and depression will continue to grow.
Now it is clear that much writing on LinkedIn from professional women who are also mothers amounts to supporting each other through guilt, and I have made it clear in my writing that I have no intentions of writing in a way – like they do – to soothe that guilt. Rather I think that people should not only acknowledge that guilt but they should sit in it and deliberate on why it is they feel it because there might just be some important messages to be heard if they can open up to them.
I believe manic activity by many parents – which often flows through into much extracurricular activity for children and little quality free time or rest – is in large part a product of that guilt for many parents and their attempt at avoidance.
If we liberate ourselves from the societal pressure to have it all and be it all, I am certain that many people will decide to work fewer hours. Moreover, even though I would encourage every father I knew to do just that, I could easily imagine more women would do that than men and would feel a great sense of relief.
Then again, with reduced hours it could well be possible for 2 parents to work a fulltime 4 day week, or 30 hours a week, with the children spending much of their time outside of school hours with at least one parent.
I wrote “The Great Reset” at the end of March 2020 when almost everybody else was still struggling to understand what humanity confronted. Yes, once the concept was picked up by the World Economic Forum and (then) Prince Charles, and the concept of Reset appeared in the local context in a book by Ross Garnaut, the looney conspiracy theorist Right attempted to discredit it and some have backed away from using the terminology.
However, ‘Reset’ has undeniably become one of the organisational buzzwords of the post-pandemic era.
The truth is that this concept of Reset still represents a golden opportunity to the Left. There is no doubt that many are very tired of Extreme capitalism – it is everywhere on LinkedIn from discussion of burnout and extreme fatigue as people question what it is they’re doing on this hamster wheel of a life that they have acquiesced to, not chosen, and as they search for balance and meaning in life. The response to Luigi Mangioni’s brutally calculated murder of health insurance executive Brian Thompson is another expression of the same.
Moreover, I’m willing to bet that for all of the popular talk amongst two income families about how challenging home schooling was during the pandemic, the old “deathbed conversation” metric of true meaning will prove quite different, and I would expect that with the further passage of time the children remember this period fondly as a time of togetherness and connection with family when they had the attention of their parents, and they went for walks in the park together.
Now this is where the experience of being a male full time parent is pivotal because I understand as well as any how isolating it is and how vulnerable a parent who does not work finds themself in this society built on Extreme capitalism. I realised over 10 years ago, having depleted my meagre superannuation from my working years to cover life insurances, etc to put as much of our single income towards home ownership, that if my marriage were to breakdown I would be at risk of homelessness without the potential at all of resuming my prior career.
That is why I understand it is absolutely imperative that there are taxation measures for lesser and non-working parents not just to support them but to recognise their contributions to society (e.g. access to a second tax-free threshold on the working parent’s income, even if the refund is directly into the superannuation account of the non/minimal working parent). A government investment in family and community.
Initially working fewer hours will be attainable without reducing income due to increased productivity attained by eliminating bullshit jobs. However, increasingly taxation will need to tax machines (instead of human salaries) by taxing capital (business and wealth).
I think all serious thinkers on the progressive Left know that a universal basic income is an absolute necessity and it is time to start moving towards that now while labour still has some power against capital (and Xcaps).
Now all of this would be good news for a real party on the Left – in fact it represents a political golden opportunity of multifaceted proportions.
For one, it’s going to happen anyway. AI is going to necessitate fewer human working hours. We can be afraid of that and allow anxieties to continue to brew, looking at the Jetson’s (and John Maynard Keynes predictions for that matter) as an unrealistic pipedream – continuing to create work for the sake of it which makes more people even more anxious and depressed because they know it is ultimately pointless – or we can embrace it and lead people to understand the very, very significant benefits that it can bring them in their lives and in all the lives of those they love.
But the real gift for the Left is this – this absolutely goes across the full, broad strata of society, thereby enabling a narrative – for the first time in history – that can accommodate both blue collar and white collar workers that says that a balanced, dignified, healthy and rich life is attainable.
It allows for all of the nostalgia of a simpler, inclusive, more egalitarian life, but one with all of the systemic benefits of a prosperous and developed society, without resorting to the lie that a society that has never dealt with a horrific racist past could ever have been great.
The only real problem that the mainstream Left has is getting their own Xcap powerbrokers to part with their inequitably, disproportionate privilege.
I would not be surprised if another pre-determined outcome to this shindig is to recommend limiting negative gearing to new build homes (some speakers have a varied history on housing policy). I wrote to Labor’s newly installed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recommending him to do that, along with ex-Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, on 11 December 2007. God help us all if Xcaps still have a stranglehold on our politics 17 years from now …
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© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2025
MacroEdgo 
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