Poem: Me Generation and the death of a nation

Me Generation and the death of a nation

There was a time when most knew want and therefore understood,

That in this land across the sea, there was a chance for good.

Knowing adversity, they saw their fellows in that light

And so against inequity they were prepared to fight.

Equality their watchword, they scorned pretension's pose

And knew it wrong to measure by the cut of someone's clothes.

The pronouncement of the "learned", they dismissed as rant

And "Political Economy" as privilege's cant.


And so they built a paradise where workers' heads were high

The sort of place, that to preserve, they were prepared to die.

A place where there was plenty and no-one need be shamed

Where the lust for gold of petty men by union's strength was tamed.


Then came a generation that only thought of "me!"

They didn't have to struggle against disparity.

They didn't have to argue, they didn't have to fight

They took each hard-earned privilege as if it were their right.


They went to university and learned to rationalize

As lawyers and doctors they believed each other's lies.

"Ability" and "effort" they asserted piously

Must be repaid in "lucre" if "enterprise" is free.


John Singleton and Bobby Hawke, Paul Keating and his crew

Perverted mateship to a con of many for the few.

"Employment generation" became the holy creed

As they "downsized" half the nation to satisfy their greed.

They sent their kids to private schools so they would have a "chance"

And crucified the public schools without a second glance.

"Trust us", they said, "We're dinkum, true."

While as they spoke their fortunes grew.


And the decent were derided and the dedicated dumped

The avaricious pampered while the poor and weak were thumped.

While the tunnel-visioned retards of the economic push

Poured scorn upon the values of the people of the bush.

And the Murdochs and the Packers and their servile sycophants

Perverted truth to suit the style of the scum who ran the banks.


While the gifted sold their talents for the holy dollar's lure

As the advertising "quislings" corrupted what was pure

And the businessmen got richer though they screamed for "more" and "more"

The young in their confusion suicided by the score,

Or doped themselves with heroin to cope with what they saw.


The sympathy for "battlers" and "underdogs" got lost.

The safeguards that protected them were scrapped on grounds of "cost".

The people's institutions were sold to feed the greed

Of the brutish and the venal who had never suffered need.

And the silver spoon-bred business pimps like Kennett and Costello

Derided all "humanity" and glorified the shallow.


Everything our forbears stood for, everything that gave us pride,

Every principle and purpose, has been crudely cast aside.

Every decent motivation, everything that made us free

Has been subordinated to the clamour: "Me! Me! Me!"

R. Cutting

From GLW issue 264