In the closing weeks of last year, we interviewed Parnell Palme McGuinness. It’s not an obvious choice for us. As a former consultant for the Liberal Party and conservative-leaning columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, McGuinness jokes she’s the “diversity hire” for those left-ish leaning papers. These days, she’s also a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, a place where we would expect to find few commonalities.
And on top of that, she has an East German mother, and the experience of living for a while in East Berlin, where she sampled the negative impacts of what a command and control socialist world can deliver. McGuinness also has a family heritage steeped in journalism and strong opinions, no less than through her famous father, Padraic Pearse “Paddy” McGuinness.
So quite a challenge, you might agree!
But to have a hope of shaping where our world is going in terms of social and environmental justice, it’s clearly important to understand the social and political forces that have a say in those issues, how the different sides think, what their arguments are, whether there is room for dialogue and the potential to come to a negotiated position that allows progress.
Because one thing we’ve noticed is that most people say they want the same outcomes – a great environment, clean air and water, better housing, social equity – what varies is how to go about getting them.
This was a fascinating and insightful conversation. We traversed everything from childcare (McGuinness thinks funding should allow greater freedom of choice) to housing (she thinks the existing system ties inappropriate typologies to inappropriate locations), immigration and extreme thinking. We were in danger of talking all week.
See what you think. Please send us your thoughts, feedback or suggestions for other articles.
A note of warning – a technical issue meant we did not have our usual sound quality enabled. So, apologies for any scratchiness.