Saturday 28 June 2014

Mark Carnegie wants compulsory civilian national service


Geelong Grammar School alumnus, millionaire founder of M.H. Carnegie & Co, entrepreneur, investor, corporate adviser, property developer, sometime Q&A panellist and business partner of John Singleton, Mark Carnegie, wants both your young and your old conscripted into his part-time civilian ‘army’ – at a huge, ongoing cost to the federal budget bottom line.

And it will be a huge cost considering there are over 11 million employed people in Australia – every one of which would have an employer with his/her hand out for compensation.


The occasion was the inaugural Di Gribble Argument, an event to honour the memory of the publisher who loved a good debate. Carnegie’s starting point was his assertion that ‘‘the current state of citizens’ engagement makes me terrified for the Australia we will leave for our children’’.
‘‘More and more people are disengaging completely from politics or becoming single-issue evangelists, a trend which can only lead to the dictatorship of the passionate minority,’’ he argued.
What followed was a lively discussion about the merits of Carnegie’s proposition that civic service, like jury duty, should be made compulsory for all, with employers paid the cost of releasing their workers for one week every few years, and greater demands made on the young and the old….

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