Rotorvoter, David Williamson probably took this cruise with the knowledge that he would get rich material for a new play. Anyway here is his reply to the blockhead critics .....
" David Williamson responds to his critics
Aspirational Australians' "obsessive focus on material acquisition, encouraged by governments who worship economic growth and little else, have locked us into a probable long-term disaster scenario for Cruise Ship Australia and for the planet as a whole," railed playwright David Williamson in his 2005 Sir Rupert Hamer Lecture at Melbourne's Swinburne University (re-published in The Bulletin). To which Piers Akerman, Gerard Henderson and The Australian took exception.
Date: 19 October 2005
Today, David Williamson responds:
I totally expected this kind of response to my ironic state of the nation piece "Cruise Ship Australia."
All the usual right wing heavies were wheeled out to pour scorn. The one thing you can't do to these Gross National Product worshippers is suggest that eternal economic growth and ever-increasing material acquisition are unsustainable in the long term, or they literally go bananas.
Their ostrich-like behaviour is extraordinary in the face of the growing evidence that things can't go on as they are. Even the progressive oil companies are warning people that the age of oil is coming to an end. The resource is simply running out and there are no obvious replacements.
Oil has fuelled our growth and supplied the great bulk of our energy. The price of oil is tipped by even conservative observers to be on a permanent rising curve, some predicting a hundred dollars a barrel within a year. When these sort of prices start to bite, the picnic is well and truly over on Cruise Ship Australia.
We have tripled our real income since 1950, but surveys show we are no happier with our lives. Some studies show we are actually unhappier. What's the logic in eating up the earth's resources and leaving our children and grandchildren a lot less well off than we are if the habit isn't even making us happier?
Is there no-one of intelligence on the right who is prepared to look at the the long term consequences of the way we are behaving towards our fragile planet, and look beyond Gross National Product as the be all and end all of everything? "
