Fifth Annual Hawke Lecture
Indigenous Australia: the Social and Cultural Predicament
delivered by Noel Pearson, a Bama Bagaarrmugu of the Guuguwarra Nation from Kalpowar and Jeanie River area, Cape YorkSunday 3 November 2002 at the Adelaide Town Hall
Thank you Vice Chancellor for your most kind introduction. To the
indigenous people of Adelaide: I thank them for their welcome and I
bring greetings from my people in Cape York Peninsula. I am particularly
honoured by the presence of Her Excellency, Governor Marjorie
Jackson-Nelson, the Chancellor of the University of South Australia,
David Klingberg, Patron of the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, Dr
Lowitja O'Donoghue, and its Director, Elizabeth Ho.
Before I proceed to discuss the situation of indigenous peoples in Cape
York in relation to our social and cultural predicament, I want to take
the opportunity to reiterate the importance of the opportunity of the
Mabo decision on 3 June 1992. In recent years I have been attacking the
social, economic and cultural problems we face as a people, but in that
rethinking about our policies in relation to Aboriginal disadvantage and
suffering I have never repudiated the importance of Land Rights as a
cornerstone for reconciliation.
The High Court told us on 3 June 1992 that our understanding of our
legal history was incorrect. The true history, according to the High
Court, was that at the moment of sovereignty in 1788 when the British
Crown unilaterally assumed sovereignty over the Antipodean continent,
the Aboriginal peoples in truth became subjects of the British Crown.
At the moment of sovereignty, as subjects of the British Crown in
occupation of their traditional homelands and entitled to the protection
of the new land law brought on the shoulders of the settlers from
England, the indigenous peoples became in British law no less
comprehensive owners of the entire continent. Native Title existed
wherever Aboriginal people held traditional connections with their
homelands. The High Court told us that their dispossession of those
titles occurred over the next 204 years through a process of parcel by
parcel extinguishment.
This legal truth about the foundations of the country was obscured for
two centuries and that obfuscation of the legal truth resulted in the
dispossession and removal and suffering and death of numerous Aboriginal
peoples. Coming to determine the question of whether the Aboriginal
people had rights to land under the law of England imported here in
1788, the High Court had to reconcile two realities, the reality of
English law and its respect for the position of indigenous peoples who
became subjects of the British Crown upon sovereign acquisition, and the
reality of 204 years of history where numerous tribes and peoples have
been dislocated and dispossessed and indeed, in some cases, completely
annihilated.
The problem facing our seven High Court Judges when they came to
determine the Mabo decision was: how was this country going to reconcile
the truth of its English legal traditions with the realities of history
and all of the accumulated title that had taken place over two
centuries. The High Court articulated in Mabo two important principles
of Native Title Law which really form the corners of compromise, the
corners of a proposed settlement put before us by our judicial elders.
The first part of that compromise, if we are truthful, was the most
unequivocal. The first part of the compromise said that the titles
accumulated over the last two centuries inhering in the settlers and
their descendants could not now be disturbed. Those titles were now
indefeasible. Even if those titles were gained in circumstances of
regret and denial of right, the Court said that the accumulation of
these many millions of titles over two centuries could not now be
disturbed.
The first limb of Native Title Law in this country is to confirm the
privileges and titles of the settlers and their descendants. If we were
certain about anything in the wake of the Mabo decision we were certain
of that fact, that the Courts in this country and the Common Law of this
country would not allow us to derogate from those accumulated
privileges.
The second principle of Native Title Law articulated by the Court is
very simple also. It proposed that all of those lands that remained
after 204 years unalienated were the legal right of the traditional
owners. In the most settled parts of the country, these lands are few
and far between indeed. If you want to find unalienated Crown land on
the east coast of Australia you would need to go down near the mangroves
and find a block of unallocated state land or down near the dump or some
inhospitable wedge of land in some remote corner of the countryside and
of course most generously in the most deserted regions of our continent.
That was what was proposed by the High Court in the Mabo decision. Let
me put it colloquially: the whitefellas get to keep everything they have
accumulated, the blackfellas should now belatedly be entitled to
whatever is left over. The imperative flowing from the Mabo decision in
1992 was the swiftest unambiguous and ungrudging delivery of that
remainder to the indigenous peoples entitled to that belated
recognition. In some of our states we have yet to get one hectare, we
are yet to get one acre, we are yet to get one square metre of land
under a Native Title determination after 10 years.
The third part of Native Title Law, the third part of the compromise was
put forward by the Court in 1996 in the Wik decision. It said that there
are some large areas of land covered by pastoral leases and national
parks where Native Title may coexist with the Crown Title. The Court
ruled by a majority of four to three that in that coexistence the Crown
Title prevails over the Native Title if there is any inconsistency.
So those are the three limbs of Native Title Law as articulated by our
High Court in this country. The whitefellas keep all that is now theirs,
the blackfellas get whatever is left over, and there are some categories
of land where there is coexistence and in the coexistence the Crown
Title always prevails over the Native Title. That is the proposition put
forward to us as Australians by our judicial elders for our
consideration, to see whether as a people we would embrace those terms
as a just compromise 204 years after the initial failure of recognition.
Have we as Australians embraced the corners of that compromise? Have we
delivered on the justice of that compromise? Have we been faithful,
given the opportunity we have under our civilised institutions, our
constitution and our Common Law heritage, have we lived up to that
opportunity? Because it seems to me it will fall upon us as a
generation, the question will fall upon us as a generation as to whether
we showed fidelity to the terms of that compromise or we wasted the
once-in-a-nation's-lifetime opportunity to settle a question of
fundamental grievance, a question that plagues too many nations and
societies right across the globe, as long as the questions remain
unfulfilled and unanswered. I leave you with that question here this
afternoon.
Let me now turn to Bob Hawke's service to Australia and his party's
future. My views will of course be influenced by the cultural, social
and economic predicament confronting my people in Cape York Peninsula
and I believe people across indigenous Australia as an underclass.
I am bestowed many wonderful opportunities and undeserved honours in my
life. To have been asked by the man whose legacy is honoured by this
Centre to deliver the Fifth Annual Hawke Lecture, is a true privilege.
Before I proceed any further, let me first take the opportunity to thank
and honour him for his service to the people of Australia during his
long prime ministership from 1983 to 1991. The economic and political
transformations undertaken under the Prime Ministership of Bob Hawke,
were profound. Bob Hawke presided over what Paul Kelly called "the end
of certainty", the most difficult transition in the Australian economy
since the foundations of the Australian settlement were laid by Deakin
at Federation.
The challenges confronted and the reforms effected during this critical
period of Australia's history eventually confronted all western
economies. The changes in the economic and political order in Australia
and other western countries, in my view, spelt out one fundamental
reality: the decline of collectivism. Increasingly, the leverage of
organised labour in the economy—and therefore society—is receding.
Organised labour will continue to be a force for good in politics, but
the good things which the organised labour movement secured for the
common good during the heyday of the Australian egalitarian prosperity
can no longer rely upon the power of organised labour.
Not only has the role of organised labour in the economy been diminished
by the demise of manufacturing and the ascendancy of knowledge workers
and skilled contractors (who don't see the benefit of collectivism,
preferring to bargain their own individual solutions), but the interest
that the owners of capital have in ensuring the education, health and
welfare of workers, is also diminishing. There is no longer any reason
for large sections of the owners of capital to support many aspects of
the worker welfare state, constructed in Australia during the twentieth
century.
The implications of this decline in the necessity for, and in the power
of, collectivism, for the preservation of the Australian social
contract, will not all be played out in the short term. The Australian
welfare state will continue with many of the institutions and
provisionings that were put in place during the Australian settlement.
However, I predict that the following phenomena will increase in the
future:
There will continue to be political support amongst the middle classes
for redistribution, but increasingly this will be for forms of middle
class welfare.
Resentment for redistribution for working and underclass welfare will
grow in the future and declining political support will result in
declining economic provisioning.
· The position of large sections of the lower middle class will decline;
and they will at all times of insecurity focus their social and
electoral envy and resentment downwards.
· The working and underclasses will become increasingly socially
dysfunctional and unable to participate effectively in society, the
economy or in organised politics in ways that are advantageous to their
struggle. Except for a decreasing number of individuals their capacity
for social mobility as a class will have been destroyed.
I have chosen this opening discussion for two reasons. Firstly to allow
me to express my conviction that the people of Australia should be
profoundly grateful that the internationalisation of the Australian
economy was presided over by successive Hawke Labor Governments from
1983. These Hawke Governments led the country through fundamental and
difficult changes, but they ameliorated the social and economic
consequences of internationalisation for the Australian people. If you
accept the arguments in favour of the reforms that were effected during
the 1980s, then the helm could not have been in more diligent hands than
those of the Hawke Labor Government in partnership with the Australian
Council of Trade Unions.
Though a fringe-dweller when it concerns the Australian Labor Party, I
am not immune to its hero cults. Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and Bill Kelty
are in my view the true heroes of the Australian economic reform story
at the end of the twentieth century. All that has been claimed by their
successors must in all justice be properly accorded these leaders from
working Australia. It is not hard to imagine how much harsher the impact
of these changes could have been and it is not hard to imagine where we
might have been today, had the Hawke Government not confronted the
challenges facing the country in 1983.
The second reason for my opening discussion is to give a context to what
I really want to discuss in my lecture today: the revitalisation of the
Australian Labor Party and the challenges which it faces. That the great
party is in trouble is obvious to all of us.
In the handbook of contemporary political practice in two party
democracies—other than seeking product differentiation (which Simon
Crean sees as his challenge and difficulty in these fearful times) or
seeking to be a small target (which Kim Beazley pursued before the last
election, and at which John Howard succeeded in the lead-up to the 1996
election) and waiting for the "it's time" factor to deliver
government—there are two bold methods of seizing or holding onto power.
The first method is the wedge and it was given its most ruthless
definition by Pat Buchanan in his advice to Richard Nixon in the early
seventies when he told the President: "Let's split this country in two
and we'll pick up the bigger half". The Republicans in the United States
developed and perfected the wedge in modern politics, and they devised
ruthless and clever methods for driving wedges between the broad
coalition of constituencies that, in the absence of divisions between
them, constituted a majority of the electorate that was susceptible to
voting for the Democrats.
During the 1996 poll I gave an address to The Sydney Institute where I
charged the Coalition with importing wedge politics from the United
States into Australian Federal politics. In fairness to Howard, he also
used the second method available to those seeking political office: he
triangulated the Labor Party at the beginning of the campaign on what
was supposed to be a Labor forte, the environment. His announcement of
their Natural Heritage Trust, replete with ringing endorsements from
environmental groups seeking to incite a bidding war on the environment,
left a positive impression of a progressive party committed to the
environment. Howard had stepped to the left of the Labor Party, or at
least, given the impression that he had done so. The political
consultant and one-time collaborator of President Bill Clinton, Dick
Morris, calls this second method triangulation: "Have solutions to
issues which are normally the forte of the other side of politics".
The wedge is a negative tool and I suspect that it can only be used by
the right side of politics. As well as splitting up the broad coalition
of people who support the left by finding points of division between
them, it also splits off left voters from left leaders. It is not
possible for the left side of politics to use the wedge. Triangulation
on the other hand is a strategy that can be used by left or right. It
involves moving in the opposite and forward direction to one's political
party (towards one's opponents but forward to a more sophisticated
position—the so-called "radical centre"). It is not just a matter of
moving in the other direction. For the left it's about using
opposite-side measures to achieve your-side objectives. For the right
it's about using your-side measures to achieve opposite-side objectives.
In his book Behind the Oval Office Dick Morris explains how he came to
conceptualise triangulation as a strategy. With the Clinton presidency
in serious trouble after the Republican landslide in the 1994
Congressional elections, Newt Gingrich and his young Republican troops
were on the front foot, armed with a comprehensive program that included
a hard rightwing assault on welfare, the environment, lower taxation,
massive expenditure cuts and a balanced budget, et cetera. Their program
was set out in Gingrich's manifesto Republican Contract with America
(which the wits quickly dubbed the Contract on America). Dick Morris was
convinced (and his polls confirmed) that the traditional Democratic
counter-positions to the Republican agenda were not working and would
not work with the public. On welfare for example, the public was in
favour of reform and the traditional Democratic positions were not
cutting with them.
Morris argues that triangulation is not just an opportunistic strategy:
Triangulation is much misunderstood. It is not merely splitting the
difference between left and right. Clinton's objective was to combine
the best theme from each side: "opportunity" from the left and
"responsibility" from the right. And he rejected the worst of each: the
tendency of conservatives to ignore the problems of the less privileged,
and the liberals tendency to be naïve. This "third way" rises above the
other two and forms a triangle.
Triangulation is the political or tactical strategy that complements the
Third Way as a political program or philosophy (if it can be called a
political philosophy). Superficially we in Cape York appear to be
disciples and evangelists for the Third Way. Many people on the left,
because they associate us with Mark Latham in the Australian political
scene—and with other friends in the "social entrepreneurs" movement—see
us as Third Wayists. In terms of political strategy and policy thinking,
there is considerable common ground between what we are trying to do and
the Third Way which is associated with Tony Blair and Bill Clinton (and
with Latham, who has been the only explicit advocate for the Third Way
in the Australian Labor Party). But we in Cape York are not Third
Wayists in the generally understood sense.
I will just make two observations about the Third Way politics as
articulated by Latham and by Dick Morris. Firstly, it professes to
eschew ideology—preferring to be pragmatic and acting on "evidence",
including the basic common sense and goodwill of the public which (in
Morris's view) can be accurately and must necessarily be ascertained
through polling. In particular it rejects class theory and class-based
politics, if for no more reason than they do not work electorally.
Secondly, contrary to the critics, Third Way politics is driven by
(micro) policy flexibility and inventiveness. The Clintons, in the
American parlance, were the consummate "policy wonks"—possessing great
knowledge and expertise in policy ideas and practice—and throughout
Morris's book there is a constant policy entrepreneurialism: you can see
how (poll-tested) micro-policies drove Clinton's electoral comeback
strategy. Of course, the Third Way allows for greater flexibility
because it is unconstrained by the traditional left–right boundaries:
the Third Way is prepared to use right wing methods to achieve left wing
objectives, and this affords a great flexibility and agility to the
strategies than can be employed in the pursuit of leftist goals.
After his visit with us to Cape York last year, Robert Manne wrote that
our thinking had genuinely "moved beyond left and right". However, we
are not Third Wayists, because the analytical framework that underpins
our thinking and our strategies is consistent with the analysis of the
early international labour movement. An outline of our thinking is set
out in my Light on the Hill: Ben Chifley Memorial Lecture in 2000. So
ours is an old left analysis—but we separate the analysis from the
policy response to that analysis; we are not necessarily socialists.
Our difficulty is that the outlook of the left today is not the outlook
of the left of the early international labour movement. The left today
would be unrecognisable to the original left. And the old left critique
of political economy provides an explanation of why many of the policies
of the official left today are in objective fact obstructive of social
progress on the part of the lower stratum of society. Much of their
thinking and work is in the service and perpetuation of stratification,
contrary to what they believe and think.
So our position may be understood as follows: our intellectual and
analytical framework is an old left analysis, but our policies and
strategies must contend with our current political and cultural
predicaments. In a world of ideological confusion, declining
collectivism and heightening stratification, our people must pursue
strategies that aim to improve our position in a society where our
people reside in the most miserable underclass and there are structural
reasons why this is so and there are structural impediments to our
people rising out of this underclass. As one of the elders from Cape
York said after we had discussed the impediments that keep our people
down: "we have to zig zag past the snakes, and scramble up the ladders".
In working out how to "zig zag" past the intellectual and cultural
impediments facing our people in Cape York, I have had to argue some
perspectives that have been quite bracing for the left of Australian
politics. It is never my intention to narrowly criticise the Labor
Party. In my efforts to facilitate a change for the better in Cape York
Peninsula, I have come to the conclusion that there are fundamental and
general problems with the modern progressive and liberal Australian
intellectual and political culture. What has prompted my reorientation
over the last years is that, as the social disintegration among my
people in Cape York Peninsula accelerated, no intellectual and political
response emerged among Australia's political and intellectual elites —
the journalists and commentators, the anthropologists and other
academics, the progressive politicians.
The policy areas that currently are most often mentioned in connection
with me —passive welfare and substance abuse—have occupied my mind for a
long time. I became known to the Australian public as a Land Rights
advocate in the early 1990s, but the core of the thinking behind the
initiatives in Cape York Peninsula which have attracted attention in the
last years was expressed already in a paper I wrote together with my
late friend Mervyn Gibson, fifteen years ago in 1987.
Whilst I became involved in the fight for Land Rights, I left the
questions surrounding our social and cultural breakdown to the
anthropologists and other academics, who had much more knowledge. I
literally hung out to read some insightful explanation for our
deteriorating condition as a people and what we needed to do to turn
things around. I waited and waited. Then I realised that we Aboriginal
people had to do it ourselves.
I also realised the problem was not only a lack of theory dealing with
the social disintegration among my people. It was also a set of ideas
that seemed to travel together in the minds of liberal and progressive
Australians and form a complex of automatic responses to the indications
of how bad things were. There was a tendency to always interpret
substance abuse as a symptom of circumstances, in our case
dispossession, rather than as a causal factor in its own right. There
was a belief in the ability of welfare payments to sustain people that
led to a lack of interest in the social effects of passive welfare on
indigenous Australians compared to the social effects of historical
factors such as dislocation and separation of people from their
families. There was a tendency to think of enforcement of social order
as an unsophisticated rightist approach that didn't deal with the
underlying issues. There was a great interest in Land Rights and
historical injustices, and a focus on lack of funding and infrastructure
as the explanations for bad health, disadvantage and violence.
I think the inability to reverse the destruction of Aboriginal society
initiated by dispossession, and the application of measures that often
made things worse, were indicative of a general inability of modern
Australian cultural and intellectual life to deal with social
disintegration and instability. This is indicative of ways of thinking
that have influenced most people on the left or left-liberal side of
politics, including many people in the Liberal Party and myself.
According to the polls, Labor has lost its traditional lead over the
Coalition in social policy areas. Indigenous affairs could be a starting
point for a discussion about what needs to be done if Federal Labor is
to win back the electorate.
Outlining one's thoughts about the revitalisation of Federal Labor is
currently not a very original topic. The public has for a long time been
bombarded with conflicting messages for the future of the Federal Labor
Party that include:
returning to the party's blue collar traditions and core groups of
workers and putting less emphasis on the issues championed by the
progressive middle class such as Aboriginal rights
differentiating Labor policies from those of the coalition by embracing
riskier policies and policies allowing for more state intervention
reducing the influence of unions
reducing the importance of the factional system
attracting the so-called aspirational voters
competing with the greens for the "socially progressive" voters.
Based on my experiences, I think Labor needs to challenge the cultural
left. This may not sound original, there has been much talk about the
"chattering classes", the middle-class "chardonnay left" and so on. I
differ in that I would like to launch this criticism from the left
rather than from the right as is usually done.
First I want to explain what I mean by the "cultural left". Those who
declare themselves to be left-of-centre advocate many genuine socialist
and social democratic ideas. By genuine socialist and democratic ideas
and policies I mean that they are the result of the thinking and
struggle of ordinary working people and progressive intellectuals, and
that they serve the interests of the unprivileged. These ideas include
universal education and other aspects of the welfare state.
But progressive policies that do not change in response to the real
outcomes become "progressivism", championed by a "cultural left" rather
than a real left. The phrase "cultural left" has a double meaning.
Firstly, the people who carry this tradition mainly belong to the
cultural sphere—academia, journalism, the arts and so on. The Australian
Financial Review uses the word "cultural" in this broad sense when they
publish their yearly list of the culturally most powerful Australians.
Secondly, this label emphasises that it is a tribal culture, a
self-contained way of thinking.
I say that I criticise from the left because I have espoused some of the
original ideas of the nineteenth century international labour movement
that now are very unfashionable. I have talked about class and that
there is an element of unjustified stratification in our society, and
that many aspects of our cultural and intellectual superstructure seem
to have the objective function of maintaining social inequality.
My ideas that there is a class society, and that there is cultural
structure maintaining class society, might seem eccentric nowadays, but
they are not far from thoughts expressed by Mark Latham. In the recent
debate about civility in politics, he said: "For the establishment,
civility is a way of preserving the social pecking order. It helps the
ruling class to avoid public scrutiny and accountability."
I have not abandoned the defence of the welfare state or berated
organised labour. Indeed, I recognise the role that organised labour has
played in making our society a civilised and relatively egalitarian one
throughout our history.
However, because of my experiences I have formed a prejudiced judgement
that the cultural left is in may ways objectively reactionary,
preserving obstacles for the lower classes and the underclass—including
Aboriginal people—to advance.
Let me return to some comments by Mark Latham. About the kind of
criticism I levelled against current thinking and policies in indigenous
affairs last year, Latham said in Parliament that "I [Mark Latham] have
seen some of these problems in my own electorate, particularly in public
housing estates...We can provide advanced health services, but they are
not likely to be of any use to people rutted into socially pervasive
addictions. The mainstream debate in Aboriginal affairs is concentrated
on questions of native title, education, health, housing and even
parliamentary apologies. In reality, these are second or third order
issues...What sort of system pays money to a pregnant girl to drink at
the canteen all day, passing on foetal alcohol syndrome to her unborn
child?"
He also wrote about what he called ”Symbolic Australia, a class of
politicians and media commentators who talk the language of symbolic
change, a language full of rights, entitlements and apologies...symbolic
change...[that] never changes the way in which poor people
live...Symbolic Australia sees itself as well intentioned, worldly and
even morally superior. In practice...it is more part of the problem than
the solution. Symbolic change acts as a veil on the cruel reality of
welfare dependency. After a 30-year debate on Aboriginal rights, for
instance, the political class is only just discovering the true extent
of domestic violence and drug abuse in Aboriginal communities."
These comments are close to things I have said. Mark Latham has also
said that:
"[i]n the 1970s...a new group of influential people emerged...the
progressive establishment, led by academics, artists and other cultural
producers."
"Howard's strategy is to demonise...those associated with the rise of
progressive politics over the past 30 years. Howard uses issues such as
refugees and reconciliation as a proxy for his side of the culture war",
"setting inner-city activists against the suburban working class."
"In the suburbs, [q]uestions of social responsibility and service
delivery are all-important."
"[E]lectoral contest will [increasingly] be determined by social
values."
"Increasingly, I get the feeling that all politics is cultural."
Latham went on to say:
"For the left, this is unfamiliar territory...Labor parties won the
votes of working people on the basis of economic issues. Now we are
losing them in the values debate. This is not because our values are
wrong. Far from it; the ideals of a more cooperative and cohesive
society have never been more relevant."
I think that Latham glosses over the fact that the problem for Labor is
not just that the Coalition is tactically clever. Many ordinary people
are sceptical towards Labor because they feel that many of the attitudes
of the cultural left, which people associate with Labor, undermine the
"ideals of a more cooperative and cohesive society".
Latham was correct that "[i]f [Labor] is to win elections, [Labor] must
be competitive in the culture war."
But he avoided the logical conclusion that if you are lagging badly you
must change something fundamental about yourself to become competitive.
Labor is vulnerable in the culture war because of the influence of the
cultural left. Latham said that "[t]he culture war is there to be won.
It is just waiting for the Labor movement to mobilise."
In my view it is not just a matter of the Labor Party in its current
shape mobilising. It must understand the barrier that cultural left
policies are between them and the great majority of Australians.
In order to win power, the Labor Party must win ordinary Australians who
vote Coalition without being theoretically committed to economic
liberalism, anti-unionism, or against state intervention. Labor needs to
win back those who want social and economic stability, everybody in
work, no crime, no drugs tolerated, no welfare bludging and education
that teaches fundamental skills. Those who vote for the Coalition but
are not xenophobic, uninterested in indigenous people, addicts, or
people in need of financial assistance. People who want legality and
social order. These people will not come back to Labor as long as the
party allows the cultural left too much influence.
What all this amounts to is that the cultural left is objectively
reactionary. They are (unwittingly) the defenders of the worst kind of
market economy, a society where people are intellectually crippled and
formatted, distracted by unnecessary endemic drugs, criminality and
irrational social tensions (ethnic and other), preoccupied with useless
ideas and useless books, if they make any attempt to read or think, and
so on. All in the interest of the unworthy sectors of the privileged
classes and the destructive aspects of our stratified society.
In closing I would like to make a final point which Federal Labor should
think about and take heart from. Whilst Tony Blair and Bill Clinton
championed The Third Way during the 1990s and apparatchiks like Dick
Morris came to articulate triangulation as a political strategy, in fact
the originators of the Third Way triangulation (particularly in economic
policy) were the Hawke Governments of the 1980s, supported in four
elections, and able to carry the confidence of the Australian people
through a period of bracing economic reform. Prime Minister Bob Hawke
championed economic policy reform in the 1980s. Social policy reform is
the new agenda in this new millennium. Thank you.