There was a joke from the Cold War era that went like this:

Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, is visiting the United States and is the guest of honour at a sumptuous state dinner. He tells the assembled guests:

“We in the Soviet Union see you in the capitalist west like a mighty freight train, racing at full speed towards the edge of a cliff.” (PAUSE FOR EFFECT) “But we will beat you!”

As it turned out of course, the communist train didn’t make it too much further down the track before its wheels fell off and it dropped out of the race.

This old joke popped to mind the other day while I was reading the paper and seeing our political leaders trumping bad policy with worse policy. For instance, there are some jobs these days that have become super-sacred.

Miners, timber workers and pulp mill operators can sleep easy at night, safe in the knowledge that no government, (Laboral, State or Federal, doesn’t matter) no government, will threaten their jobs.

Why is this? It’s not that many jobs in the over all scheme of things. Plenty of other trades, skills and professions have bitten the dust in recent times, often painlessly through voluntary redundancy and natural attrition.

Perhaps it’s not the workers’ interests that are being protected but rather the employers who must be kept sweet.

It’s an easily observed social structure that we tend to have friends with roughly the same level of wealth. We’re not snobs, it’s more a case of wanting to be able to reciprocate an invitation to dinner. Having social friends who have vastly more or sadly much less than us can put a strain on a regular dinner party guest list.

So, to return to our moderately wealthy and powerful politicians, they are more likely to socialise with the captains of industry than with Joe down the pub.

Over cognac after dinner at the club, this is where the future direction of our society is being planned. I’d be willing to bet that a lot of our blustering politicians actually negotiate with big business like a rabbit in the headlights.

We now know without doubt that burning coal to make electricity is foolish. We can see the need for more trees not fewer and we know that every drop of water is precious.

Come on you Eden-Monaro aspirants, promise us a modern gas-fired power station, supplemented with wind and solar, one that doesn’t break down and won’t pollute the planet.

Listen to the farmers who want to rehabilitate their land to build up its carbon capital and get a scheme going to reward them for their effort.

Just remember as the big boys pour you another whisky, it’s Joe down the pub and Jane waiting at home who will be doing the voting some Saturday soon.

Joe, Jane and the rest of us are still aboard that freight train racing towards the cliff. Someone has to get up to the loco and slow it down so we have time to change track and head instead towards a sustainable future.