My family arrived in Australia in 1954. It was a white Australia we came to, essentially a sort of reflection of an English society.

We were Dutch, and my parents held fast to many of the Dutch traditions, attending a Dutch church, celebrating St Nicholas instead of the commercialised English/Australian Christmas, at least until the kids started to kick up a bit... the gifts we got were worn out by the time the kids down the road got theirs. And so, in the early days we felt ‘different’ but as time went on, schooling, mum’s Aussie cooking classes, dad’s improved employment all made us fit in, even to the extent of enjoying AFL and cricket.

So we were different, but gradually fitted in: we did not stand out, the colour of our skins did not mark us, the clothes we wore fitted into the accepted standards and our accents softened.

We were made to feel welcomed.

European immigrants will tell of similar stories, but only if they easily slipped into being or at least able to pass as an almost true-blue Aussie.

I worked in transport for the last sixteen years of my working life, and among the various crews were a disparate bunch, workmates from all corners of the globe, covering many cultures. The uniform, the corporate identification, in part papered over the differences but for many there were some uncomfortable times. The first aid room was used as a prayer room for Muslims, head scarves were tolerated, and it all seemed very harmonious.

Some people could not hide behind the corporate image. Skin was too different.

The Kiwi contingent did not have too many problems, there were quite a few of them, but the African and Asians did stand out a bit and were often sidelined, were bullied in subtle ways, snide remarks, noises, name calling (always in jest of course, not meaning anything by it).

To the white majority there was no sense of racism: we were not sidelined, bullied, harried, made aware of not fitting in because we set the rules, we set the standards, look like us, talk like us, be like us and all is good unless they were gay, or otherwise different. There was a ‘flat earther’ who copped a bit of flack.

And so we come to Laura Tingle’s comments about Australia being a racist nation.

Dammit, she is right!

But for most of us true-blue white Aussies we cannot see it, those privileged white people in exalted positions of power cannot see it, they fit in, they set the standard of how to look, how to sound, how to think. They cannot see the marginalisation of First Nations people, except to look down their noses, complaining about all we have done for them, the buckets of money we have grown at them, what is your problem, can’t you just be like us?

They cannot see that the ‘people of colour’ arriving from war torn homelands or intolerant religious leaders or desertification of arable lands where life has become impossible to live are human beings wanting to live a peaceful existence away from the fears of their homelands.

And the problems lie deep inside us.

We are racist. We are inherently racist.

We are bigoted. We are inherently bigoted.

We are biased. We are inherently biased.

We ALL are. And until we recognise that within ourselves we cannot address those inherent racist, bigoted, biases we have.

As an immigrant kid growing up in Australia I was told all the good things about the Dutch. They were THE BEST! Strangely, two school mates, one Russian and the other Latvian were told that they were the best. The Aussies of British descent knew they were the best. They after all were the dominant culture.

So we had this challenge, to fit in, to learn to play cricket and AFL, although we were pretty good at soccer too.

Each of us had our little bits of ‘home’ to keep us in touch with our roots, mostly church, Calvinist, Lutheran, Russian Orthodox as well as ethnic clubs, sporting groups and music, food. Saturday schools were interesting too, keeping language and learning more about traditions. So we learned of our ethnic and racial roots which set us apart and yet allowed us to fit into what was at that time essentially a nation which welcomed immigrants, so long as they were not too different. The White Australian Policy was still there to filter out undesirable inferiors.

We grew up in a white society, First Nations people were not counted as part of us, we considered them more like fauna. Pushed to the fringes of the towns and cities, looked down on, waiting for them to quietly disappear. Even after the referendum where we finally recognised them as part of the Australian population, as people, they remained at the fringes, unable to ‘integrate’ into mainstream Australia.

The Colombo Plan did allow people from Asian and Pacific Island nations to study in Australia, but those numbers were very much limited.

Our inherent racism gave us a sense of identity, that we were perhaps a little bit different than those around us, but we felt we were pretty good so we fitted in, so much so that outside of home we almost became hyper Aussies, almost more Australian than our Aussie mates. We followed our favourite footy teams and urged the Aussies on playing any other nation’s cricket teams.

Those we did encounter with darker skin than us were seen as inferior, they lived on the fringes, were a dirty bunch, unwashed, unkempt and often drunk. Very easy to judge and dismiss.

And this attitude is still evident today. The coroner’s inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker uncovered many instances of racism directed at the First Nations peoples. Police in NSW used stop and search tactics in the most disadvantaged area of their jurisdictions, the imprisonment rate of Aboriginal people is a national disgrace, the treatment of Aboriginal boys in Youth Detention Centres has been cruel, an institutional form of torture.

Discrimination is evident even in traffic offences, the rate of Aboriginal drivers getting traffic fines through camera sourced infringements is lower than their proportion of population but traffic stop infringements are far higher. A work colleague found he was not stopped anymore after he removed the Aboriginal flag sticker from his car.

Recent waves of immigration, especially on humanitarian grounds has seen African immigrants come into the country. They can be truly scary. Just ask the former home affairs minister, now leader of the opposition. And we have all those Indians arriving, taking over the transport industry and tech stuff. You never know what weapons they carry beneath those turbans.

Yes, we all can submit to the fear of different races of humans suddenly appearing in our neighbourhoods… and then you meet them and hear their stories, listen to what has forced them to leave their homelands, just as my parents left theirs so many years ago. And we find they are not all that different after all.

Bigotry lies close beneath the surface in each of us. We really do not like it much when we witness a difference which kind of raises heckles. Men and women flaunting their homosexuality, people who we cannot clearly define as we would like them to be defined. men and women, not something else which does not fit in the narrowness of our thoughts.

Again, how different is it when we can meet those people and listen to their stories, the difficulties they have faced and continue to face at school or work, the fighting for acceptance of who they really are instead of who we think they should be.

The biases we carry, whether political, religious or just expectations which have been placed on us we carry through life. Today I had lunch with a friend who has always had her hair tied back but today it was loose and look great. From childhood she had been told her hair was too straight, too fine to have loose. The only other alternative was a perm. She is in her sixties and is still shedding the bias her parents had so deeply ingrained in her. Yes, she has worn her hair loose, but never confidently. I think the accolades she got at lunch – there were a few of us agreeing – may dispel that bias.

So how do we deal with our racism, bigotry and biases?

Some people never do, preferring to see the world as they idealise it, that the society they live in must be like them, look like them, be like them, conform to what they perceive as being ‘right’. Any difference is cause for fear, that things may not be precisely as they should be. That we will be inundated by different religions, imposing different standards, upsetting the comfortable applecart they live in.

Insisting on language, speak English ‘so I can eavesdrop, listen in to your conversations, you could be saying nasty things about me, plotting some nefarious scheme to dominate my world’, giving rise to fear and hatred.

Be a man or a woman, nothing else; otherwise, I will feel intimidated when I go to the rest room, you never know what may happen… That was the gist of a conversation with a Christian lady about trans people using the women’s rest room. When asked how many times that had happened or how many trans people she had encountered, she admitted ‘none’. She feared a threat that may or may not ever happen.

By acknowledging our inherent prejudices, or racism, our ingrained bigotry and biases we can deal with them. We can see that we are actually not like others either, that we are in fact different, and learn to celebrate the difference we see, feel and live alongside, to embrace the great diversity, colour and vibrancy that difference gives us.

And yes, there will be those who do not much like it, yet we see them feasting on the diverse cultures with culinary delights, the smells and sounds of difference, spices, music, art.

Yes, Laura Tingle was right.

And it is up to each one of us to prover her wrong.

Mark Latham is in court defending his right to use homophobic slurs and language on social media and in a political setting. Included was the claim that as a gay member of the NSW parliament, Alex Greenwich is not a ‘fit and proper person’ to be an elected representative in the parliament. (Silly me for even thinking that in a democracy the voters determine who will represent them in parliament.) Mr Latham was the Parliamentary Leader of One Nation in the NSW parliament until he was kicked out of the party for being too hateful.

Mr Greenwich has since been targeted with very threatening commentary and it seems, rightly, is fearful for his safety.

On the other side of the country, the Western Australian Supreme Court is to hear the defamation case brought by Brittany Higgins’ former boss, Linda Reynolds. A powerful politician is miffed over comments made by an alleged rape victim referred to as a ‘lying cow’ by Ms Reynolds, being ‘trolled’ on social media.

Will this be the last of powerful people caught up in that infamous event five years ago to try their luck feeding from the legal money pot defamation law seems to be? So far, about the only winners have been Channel 10, but will they ever get paid? some very expensive lawyers, and one lot who are probably bit miffed that they agreed to a no win no fee arrangement with the alleged rapist.

Oh, but he, the alleged rapist, lost with a bucket full of gold to find to pay for his ill-fated action, not to mention a bill for damages to a property he lived in, paid for by his benefactor, Kerry Stokes’ Channel 7. Mmmm, how’s the gravy train working out for you, Bruce?

Ms Reynolds has mortgaged her home to pay for the lawyers, and we have a few weeks to wait to see how that will work out.

In the meantime, the appeal against the findings of the Ben Robert-Smith defamation action will be known in a few weeks. We wait with bated breath for the finding, not to mention how many tons of money that little saga has cost along the way.

I don’t know, but it appears that the greater you feel your power is, the better the chances you think you have of getting away with stuff. Mark Latham, never a shrinking violet, has a big mouth, and he fills it with hate as part of his political grandstanding. In this case his slandering not just of the man who brought the action against him, but a whole group of people who are ‘different’ in his eyes: Not worthy of his respect because he imagines their interactions and puts the imaginings in words on social media. He has power and can say whatever he wants in his political discourse… read his defence, the tweet was ‘vulgar and shocking but not defamatory’. In other words, to describe an imagined sexual encounter in the basest, vilest terms is OK when having a shot at a gay political opponent. I wonder how Mr Latham got the idea for his posts? Watching porn perhaps, or maybe… no, he may take me to court for defaming him if I go there.

Ms Reynolds had a position of power both as the employer of Ms Higgins and as a senior minister in the then government. A young woman was raped in her office, and she called her a ‘lying cow’, (lots of empathy shown there). But to take the young woman to court for daring to say she felt the case had not been dealt with adequately – brushed under the carpet when the government was already struggling with its ‘women’ problems – sounds to me like a bit of a power play. Who really cares whether the young lady was raped on the couch in my office, the evidence was cleaned up, if there was any evidence, and what was she doing there at that time of night wearing the little she was wearing anyway. ‘How is it my problem… pass it (the lying cow) on to my friend, Michealia Cash.’

And can we forget about the alpha male and his absolute right to show off his masculinity as he feels fit, whether it is to win the sexual conquest of a work colleague by filling her with booze and (allegedly) raping her in the boss’s office, leaving her to sort her own shit, ‘my girlfriend is wondering what I’m up to, gotta run’.

Ah, and then there is the ongoing saga of Ben Roberts-Smith. Defamation requires a lower level of proof, ‘on probability’ I think is the term, and ‘on probability’ he was found to have murdered unarmed Afghani people, among other things. But denial is not a river in Egypt, it is the fall to position of the alpha male. We see it in domestic violence, ‘look what you made me do’, we see it with the rapist, ‘nothing happened’, we see it with the dominating presence of Roberts-Smith, a reputed bully and big-noter, but he can do no wrong. We will see soon enough I guess.

So dented egos are very expensive to repair, and one benefactor, the Seven West media mogul Kerry Stokes is discovering.

Power is a wonderful aphrodisiac, it seems, and when a powerful person is miffed, feels slighted, the results can be very ugly. We see it with politicians, soldiers, wealthy people, but we see it also in domestic settings where partners will lash out to assert their dominance, whether it is through insidious forms of control or resorting to violence when things don’t go quite as planned.

The Catholic Archbishop of Tasmania has sent a letter to students of Catholic Schools throughout Tasmania denouncing, no, that word is way too soft, decrying, vilifying, castigating, basically saying he condemns the just about every advance in human rights attained in Australia over the last 30 or so years.

Quoting from the ABC’s news item, The Letter, by Archbishop Julian Porteous, takes aim at a “radicalised transgender lobby”, legal abortion access, voluntary assisted dying and euthanasia, and same sex-marriage, as well as the “woke” movement which he says is “seeking to overturn other traditional values and beliefs.”

I have just a few concerns about this on several levels.

Firstly, it was not long ago that the appalling behaviour of Catholic priests toward children was exposed in the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse, and what was found in that was that the church moved accused priests around from region to region, from diocese to diocese, rather than admit that there was a problem with young children being raped by their clergy, and secondly that when it came to redressing these issues, cases against the church or against specific priests were delayed time and again, hoping the aged priests would die before facing courts, seemingly to not having to face up to the crimes committed against innocent children. Thirdly, when addressing the call for financial awards made against the church they cried poor, and yes, the diocese may have been a bit short of cash, but the Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest organisations in the world and fights tooth and nail to retain, even grow that wealth… oh and need I mention they pay no tax!

Mostly, the priests abused young boys. Priests are sworn to celibacy, but I guess the urges felt against young boys is OK, since they are not women… but could it be that maybe, just maybe such peadophilic behaviour could be considered ‘homosexual’?

So could it be that just maybe, this self-righteous Archbishop is not addressing that issue within the organisation he leads?

The second area of concern is that waiting in the wings of our Federal Parliament, resting, gathering dust, is a Religious Discrimination Bill, ready to present to the Parliament to vote into law when tacit agreement is reached between the political parties. Waiting so that with minimum debate on the floor of the House, in both the Representatives and Senate chambers the bills will be voted into law, making it legal for the various religious school bodies to discriminate against teachers who do not comply with the dogmas of the religious employer, meaning that students will only see teachers and other workers within the schools who conform to those standards. Essentially a rubber stamping the right to discriminate, to continue the hatred of difference, continue to deny basic human rights to be accepted within those organisations.

But of greater concern, is what the teachers are permitted to teach when it comes to cultural issues, when dealing with sex education, when dealing with teaching about laws and how they are made, when teaching history such as the unit which deals with the holocaust where not only Jewish people were murdered but also Gypsies, homosexuals and people who were considered ‘insane’. In other words, how can a teacher be presenting these lessons with honesty and integrity?

Can they present the colonisation of Australia in an honest, truthful way as they extoll the wonderful work of the missions which introduced Aboriginal children to Jesus and his saving grace while stripping them of their cultures, removing them from their families, and their lands, denying them their languages?

Can they teach sex education in the same way it was taught in the 1960s? Basically ignored, but a small focus on how animals reproduce in biology lessons, but at the same time setting up ‘birthing facilities’ at monasteries or other church run facilities, out of sight and out of mind from the community, for pregnant teenagers to be held and the babies adopted out?

Or that teenagers struggling with their sexuality can be bullied with impunity, since these difficulties are not real, you are either a boy or a girl, get over it!

And so the right to discriminate perpetuates the hatreds embedded in the dogmatic teachings of the church, those teachings which allow vilification of difference and yet that same organisation does nothing to redress the very ‘sins’ within their own organisations.

Yes, there is more.

The third are of concern is that the church-based school systems are very well funded by the Federal Government. Much has been written in recent months about the funding, well in excess of what is needed to some of the wealthiest schools, including the Catholic Education system. Churches are tax exempt yet hold vast tracts of land on which they pay no council rates or land taxes, church income is not taxed nor are many of their community-based activities… usually for ‘their’ community. Housing for the clergy is provided by the church and is not subject to the same costs you and I pay in council rates, and so forth. Yet, these organisations hold capital greater many large businesses hold, when they build and use some of the most beautiful, valuable historical building which exist, when they hold art treasures greater than many national galleries and have revenue and cash flows many banks would struggle to come close to, but we pay them more per student at the schools they operate than we are able to pay for children in the public system.

It is absolutely mind blowingly crazy that the letter the Archbishop sent out to apparently all students within the Tasmanian Catholic Schools system can be excused. It reinforces the very prejudices which have been used to criminalise people for being ‘different’, for not to locking themselves in ‘closets’, for not wearing the mask of being ’normal’. But what really grates the very organisation he represents has a record of appalling behaviour when it comes to addressing those very issues within the church he leads, among the clergy he and his organisation have protected from the legal sanctions they should have faced for the crimes committed against innocent children.

I really think we need to address out concerns to our parliamentary representatives before the Religious Discrimination bill resurfaces for a vote.

And we need to address the funding of these organisations which demand taxpayer funding for undermining the basic human rights we have written into law over the past thirty or so years, the legal right to safe abortions, the legal right to be who we are in our sexual self-definition, the legal right to determine that when our end of life suffering becomes unbearable (a friend recently passed, having gone through the legal process to end life when she could no longer endure her pain. Although she did not use the process, she found comfort in having signed, so she had a measure of control over how her passing could be).

We need to urge our representatives to reject that bill, to not wind the clock back to a time when religions suppressed human rights, criminalised those who for no fault of their own were different.

We need to deny funding to schools which do not uphold the human rights we have fought for and have enshrined in our laws.

A book on same sex parenting is banned. The ban only applies to a few libraries in NSW, in a local council area where the faith-based decision was made, the debate led by a man who admits to not having read the book and claiming a two-year-old saw the book and was asking questions and stating that children should not be sexualised.

There are a couple of problems here, firstly, a two-year-old asking questions about a book in a library… really? Imagine, “Mummy, Daddy, why has that kid on the book cover got two dads?” and secondly, how are children sexualised in this?

So objections are raised, and a book banned because a councillor finds offence, and garners enough support in a council meeting for the motion banning the books in libraries within the council district to pass.

The steady growth of faith-based issues in all levels of government is concerning but in line with the objectives of faith leaders to gain greater influence in what is seen as a rejection of religion in the wider community.

Within the Liberal Party we see candidates being put forward who will rail against declining moral standards, openly anti LBGTIQA+, espousing ‘traditional values’, effectively trying to wind the clock back to times when Christian values were the accepted norm. A return to times when we could be comforted knowing that basically we all agreed to standards and were all basically the same. (And throw homosexual men into prison. Strangely, lesbians were OK, no law threatening them, but I guess in earlier times we could call them witches and burn them at the stake.)

It’s not just the Liberal Party pushing the sameness barrow, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party were founded on such a philosophy and projects it with a ‘go back to where you came from’ mantra for any who are different.

But what are the seven pillars, or mountains referred to in the headline, and how are they manifest in politics and in the broader community?

The seven pillars mandate comes out of Dominion Theology which is a group of Christian political ideologies based on an understanding of biblical laws which is then applied through law and by-law making at the various levels of government: local, state and federal.

The seven pillars are Society, Family, Education, Government, Media, Entertainment and Commerce.

It’s really interesting to look at the various things that are happening through the lens of those seven pillars, to understand that society works best when it follows prescribed creeds and standards, that on the beach for example, there is adequate coverage of a body with the swimsuit or that books available in the local library do nor promote a lifestyle which falls outside of the interpretation of those laws.

But that goes even deeper when we look at other forms of ‘difference’, like acceptance of cultural values that are not mainstream Judeo-Christian, like actually listening to the most marginalised Australians, giving the First Nations people a guaranteed voice to Parliament, or scorning women who wear a burka rather than ‘normal’ clothing (whatever ‘normal’ means). Or blatantly racist labelling when there are outbreaks of rowdiness or violence where some of the participants do not look ‘Australian’. (In the most culturally diverse nation on Earth, what does ‘Australian’ even look like?)

And coming back to that banned book for just a moment, what does an ‘Australian’ family look like? Certainly not two blokes bringing up a kid... or does it? Families take on so many ‘looks’, with so many marriages breaking up and parents remarrying or living in de-facto relationships, we have blended families, we have a fluidity of partnerships, we have mixed race families and so the ‘looks’ go on and on. There is no longer a stereotypical family. It is no longer a Mum and Dad and two kids, all white with blond hair and blue eyes. And thinking that through, has there ever been a stereotypical family?

Going through the list of pillars we come to that most controversial of topics: Education, and here we have some real struggles to contend with. What should we teach our children, what should be sanctioned by the education departments when it comes to teaching, what are the boundaries within friendships and dealing with class mates, teaching of respect for difference, gender difference, girl, boy, and those who find difficulty defining as either, racial or ethnic difference are probably an important ones, and as teenage hormones kick in, sex education, safe sex and an understanding of what consent looks and sounds like is just possibly something that needs some time spent on?

Or the teaching of history, should it include the history of colonialism and the treatment of Indigenous peoples? How slavery was used to produce the wealth of Empires, how lands were stolen, and Indigenous peoples corralled onto the least valued lands or otherwise just slaughtered? Of do we extoll the virtues of missionaries who ‘Christianised’ Indigenous populations as they were driven from their lands and stripped of their languages and pagan cultures?

And should the right to discriminate be written into law so that teachers in private schools are compelled to conform to prescribed standards, no LBGTIQ+ teachers and no pre-marriage cohabiting with prospective marriage candidates. And preferably be committed to the faith the school represents. Quality of teaching standards becomes of secondary importance and the prejudices and biases of the religion are reinforced through the school’s teaching. The self-righteousness, the sense of being of god’s people (which ever god is their god of choice) is reinforced allowing a long look down noses at anyone who is not ‘one of us’.

Ah, Government is next and ‘preselection season’ is in full swing as suitable candidates are chosen to contest the upcoming elections. There has been an ongoing form of, no, I dare not call it ‘Branch Stacking’, but having people of faith joining as branch members of political parties, particularly so on the right of the political spectrum. We saw it in Tasmania with a former Liberal Senator gaining a seat at the recent election, and we have witnessed the unruly infighting of the trans issue in Victoria. Some preselections in WA for next year’s state election have seen some interesting endorsements including one man who links homosexuality with pedophilia, another endorsed candidate who is a right-wing radio shock jock and as Lord Mayor of Perth has worked actively to close a women’s refuge centre and at unguarded moments lets slip the odd blokey joke, of calling the women’s Australian Open Final as being quite insignificant compared to the real one; the men’s final.

South Australia too has had people of faith dropped in as candidates, also using the same fear of difference tactic to win some but lose most of the seats they have contested. Similarly in NSW, candidates are chosen in part because of their faith-based affiliations.

The intent is clear. Things have happened in recent years which are not good. Abortion laws have been liberalised, Voluntary Assisted Dying laws have been passed, and same-sex marriage has become legal. We need not look far to see what the results could be if these candidates get up, and win government, we have seen the overturning of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision which legalised abortion in America allowing states to effectively ban all abortions. One change the Whitlam Government brought was no fault divorce. (In the USA some noise on the right is being made to see that overturned.)

The next pillar is Media, and as we have seen the Murdoch Press have continued the King Maker ethos which Rupert Murdoch claimed as early as 1972 when then News Ltd backed the It’s Time campaign which saw Gough Whitlam become Prime Minister after 23 years of conservative government, and three years later back Malcolm Fraser’s Liberal coalition to regain power. The biased mainstream media – ownership which is concentrated in such few hands – has a powerful influence in generating fear and inciting the sense of government incompetence when the right is not in power.

The government owned media networks, ABC and SBS, which as a condition of their existence need to present an even-handed approach to political reporting, have been starved of funding through successive ‘fiscally responsible’ conservative governments, and have stacked their boards with political cronies, effectively muting any sense of independence. (Strange how fiscally responsible governments have failed to produce a balanced budget.)

Entertainment is an interesting pillar, but if we consider that under a broader topic, The Arts, we see that again, where there is a cohort of free-thinking artists, whether in theatre, art, music, even sport, screws are tightened, funding reduced so that the viability of the arts is limited to already successful acts. Here in WA, we had for a number of years an exhibition at the Art Gallery of WA from the Museum of Modern Art in New York displaying some incredibly beautiful and some incredibly controversial works, but funding for that was removed by the Barnett Liberal Government.

Lastly, we have Commerce, and there we see that so much is done to ensure that commerce is profitable and that those with their hands on the wheel are well-rewarded with incentives for business to grow but for wages to be left as close as possible to subsistence levels. Stifling unions is important because we cannot allow the workers to have too much power… preferably no power.

Of the seven pillars, the ones which are really ‘battle ground’ issues are Society, Family, Education and Government. The freedoms we have gained in my lifetime are under threat, women’s rights, no fault divorce, multiculturalism, gender diversity and ethnic diversity, each of which add so much to us as a nation are under threat because of the fear of difference.

At election time, I ring candidates and ask them about political and religious affiliation and how that will affect their roles in the positions they seek. Included are questions about the issues such as views on various contentious issues such as gender diversity, health issues, including abortion, and so forth. That does not become a debate, it is for the candidate to address my concerns. If they will not give me the time, they are advised that I cannot vote for them since they do not value my interest. You may not be surprised that the current mayor in my local area, a Liberal who loved to be seen with Scott Morrison, did not respond and did not get my vote. Unfortunately, all her church mates voted. (Local election candidates in WA do not campaign under a party banner, yet most candidates are politically aligned.)

At a recent philosophy discussion group gathering the departing question from one member was ‘Can you imagine life without Capitalism?’

The question has stayed with me, churned over in my brain time and again.

To begin we need to determine what Capitalism really is and how it has come to dominate just about every aspect of Western life.

Capitalism is defined as ‘an economic system in which private actors own and control property in accord with their interests, and demand and supply freely set prices in markets in a way that can serve the best interests of society. The essential feature of capitalism is the motive to make a profit.’

That definition is broad, covering the term property as meaning land and the means of production. Capital can also be interpreted and the ownership of shares in an enterprise and with compulsory superannuation, that means that anyone who has a superannuation account is part of the ownership of capital.

Living today in a western culture, Capitalism surrounds us, we are part of it. It seems we cannot escape it. I am retired, living of pensions, both government and a superannuation pension. These pensions require that our economy keeps working, things keep getting made and consumers keep consuming them. The superannuation pension is dependent of the fund owning shares in the system, owning shares in the means of production, so even in retirement I am dependent on capitalism for my continued survival.

As an employee, continued employment is dependent on the employer to trade profitably, whether that be in production such as farming or manufacturing, retailing or in the multitude of service industries. Profit means survival.

Profit is a dividend to the owners of capital, whether it is the farmer selling his produce to market or the local cafe owner able to pay their bills for rent, consumables and wages and have a bit left for themselves. The employee becomes a major cost to the employer and yet, the employee is also a consumer of the products and services provided by capitalism.

During feudal times and in the early days of colonisation, workers were not paid but either lived a subsistence life, growing their own food and raising limited livestock. Slaves were owned by the capitalist but needed to be clothed, fed and housed.

During the Industrial Revolution wages were set at a subsistence level just enough to pay a bit of rent and buy a morsel of food so the employee had enough energy to look over the spinning and weaving tasks. If they didn’t show up at work, there were enough unemployed to fill the position. Workers costs were minimised to ensure greatest profits.

I guess for employees, there were some halcyon days, but over the passage of time, for but a very short time. The post war industrial boom after WWII saw economies grow, workers’ wages grow and workers enter the Middle Class, where home ownership became a norm, where labour saving devices became essentials, washing machines, refrigerators, furniture and furnishings, home entertainment such as HiFi, TV, and the need for two incomes to keep consumption growing, not just one car for the family but two, and as the children grew up, one for each driver in the family.

Increasingly since the mid 1980’s the owners of capital have demanded increased profits. The Thatcher and Reagan governments in the UK and USA led the charge with a trickle-down economic theory, that if the people at the top of the income pyramid, those who had invested their capital in various businesses and enterprises made lots of money, the money would somehow trickle down so that everyone benefitted from their wellbeing. Since that time, we have seen the number of billionaires grow exponentially.

Australia, under the Hawke/Keating governments fell in line and the Howard government followed suit.

The means of redistributing that wealth was compromised with taxation systems which favoured the wealthiest but since the demand for taxation revenue continued to rise, the burden was placed on those with the least, the introduction of Value Added Tax (VAT) and in Australia the Goods and Services Tax (GST) meant that consumption was taxed. Those on the lowest incomes spend most of their wages almost immediately on essential goods such as food, clothing, and so proportionately pay the most in that tax system.

In many respects, the halcyon days of yore are gone, finished. The wealthiest have built protections to secure and insure their wealth with favourable taxation regimes and with the willingness to pay (tax deductible) accountant fees are able to minimise their tax burdens while influencing governments to assist in various programmes to aid business, tax concessions on trade and work vehicles, salary sacrificing plans for new and other benefits not usually available to minimum wage earners, over funding of private schools while under funding government schools and so the list grows. Those with the most are favoured through various forms of government largess through taxpayer funds from the ones the wealth should be trickling down to are forced to pay through the PAYE taxation system and GST collection.

Was it ever otherwise?

I guess the most obvious answer is to look at pre–Colonial Australia where indigenous peoples lived communal lives sourcing the needs for survival from the environment they lived in, sharing the bounty as it occurred, collectively seeking out the next bounty to satisfy upcoming needs. There was no profit motive, there was just the cycle of life to continue.

But we cannot wind back the clock, and I don’t really think we would want to live without Capitalism, but we could, or should that be should find a way to spread the wealth of this nation so that poverty can be seriously addressed, that the housing crisis with he ensuing high rents and almost impossible hurdle for first home buyers to enter that market, and the flow on effects of poverty, drug and alcohol problems, gambling addiction and the sense of valueless which leads to the violence which is so apparent today.

We see people who are privileged suing for defamation, blocking up court time over miffed egos while the poor are criminalised for being poor but cannot afford the expense of proper representation for their legal struggles.

There are very good reasons that Capitalism works, the lives we live or aspire to live depends on that system designed to create and satisfy the demand for goods and services. But we have to make it work for all of us, not just those who allow the off penny to trickle down to those near the bottom.

A hex according to the Cambridge dictionary is ‘to put an evil spell on someone or something in order to bring them bad luck’. Looking at the recent article on HECS debts and how they are increasing under the indexation of the debt, certainly seems like an evil spell to a curse to those who aspire to a university education.

A university education is the gateway to exciting careers. Medicine; doctors and other health professionals. Law; lawyers, barristers, judges, and so many more. Engineers; and architects designing and building the infrastructure for contemporary life. Scientists; exploring the world around us, geology, marine biology, environmental sciences. Educators, and so the list goes on, opening opportunities and commanding some pretty good renumeration packages.

The cost of a university education is expensive and has traditionally been difficult for lower and middle class people to enter without some serious financial support and was considered elitist.

Over the last 80 or so years governments have lent a helping hand, offering scholarships to graduating high school students who have passed the Leaving Certificate or later iterations of a score-based criteria for university entrance, but these were limited in number and highly competitive. Graduates from wealthy families could pay fees directly, as they still can and do. During the 1940s and 50s scholarships were offered to help students into undergraduate courses, and under the Curtin Labor government the scheme was increased to include women. A bursary scheme was introduced to for Teacher’s College fees to be paid in return for an agreement to teach in government primary schools for an agreed number of years on graduation.

The election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972 saw university fees abolished so that lower- and working-class students could gain access to a university education and universities grew in enrolments; the new graduates finding interesting work in careers which for many had seemed unimaginable without the support offered. Included were a number of young people who entered politics.

The cost of funding university tuition became a bit of a budgetary sore point but the benefits of enabling a broad cohort to benefit from the opportunities offered were too important for aspirational students to be discouraged, and so the HECS scheme was introduced, essentially a loan offered by the government to pay university fees to be paid back when income thresholds were reached after graduation.

Interestingly several ministers in the Hawke government had benefitted from the free university education the Whitlam government had enabled, including Gareth Evans, Sue Ryan and Kim Beazley. In part, the rationale made good sense, the amount owed remained fixed, it was interest free and not subject to any increases and repayments commenced once an income threshold had been reached. In other words the benefits of earning a higher income allowed the debt to be repaid. The other rationale is that under the income tax regime, which is progressive, that is, the more you earn the higher rate of tax is paid, the graduate would in time make a greater contribution to the national tax take than without the extra earning capacity the degree enabled.

With the 1996 Liberal government under John Howard, the commitment to the well-known dedication Liberals have to responsible financial management it was decided that HECS debt needed to be indexed according to the annual inflation rate as defined through the March CPI figures and applied at the commencement of each new Financial Year. Each year the debt, or once repayments had commenced, the remaining debt was increased by the rate of inflation. I guess it’s a bit like buying a car for say $20,000 and financing that over a number of years, but instead of just paying off the $20,000 the price went up each year by the amount the new car price rose during that year due to inflation. Nothing at all wrong with that, is there?

Ministers who had benefitted from the free university education of the 1970s through to the introduction of the HECS scheme included Treasurer Peter Costello and fellow cabinet ministers Peter Reith, Dr Michael Wooldridge and Amanda Vanstone among others. For Alexander Downer, it seems the Australian universities were just not up to scratch, he attended Newcastle University in England.

Under the Morrison government, the price of a university education was increased dramatically, especially for those who chose ‘useless’ degrees such as an Arts Degree, you know, History, who needs to know about that? Geography, oh dear that just may include topics like global warming, nah, don’t need that, Sociology, English Lit, and so forth, even psychology and mental health subjects. University degrees which taught skills in engineering and such like, yep, need them, so make them affordable.

The hex bit of HECS is that now that the debt is indexed, it grows year on year, and through a period of higher inflation it grows very quickly, leaving the student with a repayment commitment which appears never ending. A debt of around $100,000 grows by $6,000 when the CPI is 6%, the next year if inflation has dropped to say 4.5% another $4,770 is added.

The incredible irony in all this is that the ministers and members of the government who have made these changes included people who had benefitted from the earlier initiative, breaking down the elitism of university education, making it available to all who aspired to the fruitful careers such an education offered and is now slamming the door on those aspiring to such careers.

Can we ask that the HECS hex can somehow be removed, that those dedicated students who work so hard to gain an education and careers which not only promise them a quality of life and worthwhile careers, and incomes that bring them to higher income tax brackets so their contributions late in life more than repay the costs they have incurred?

That’s right, the Stage 3 tax cuts have worked to minimise that benefit… worse before the Albo ‘lie’ as he adjusted the rate thresholds to make the system a smidgeon more equitable.

Where did the term ‘Semitic’ come from and what did it mean?

Look closely and see how mythology defines people in a very real way, marking their difference, no matter how small, as different, a means of judging, marginalising or inclusion, allowing for life or death over a definition of unprovable origin.

The Biblical story of Noah’s Flood is one of the destruction and rebuilding of the descendants of Adam and Eve, the first humans, created in God’s image.

Just a brief overview. the descendants of Adam and Eve proliferated, and the man ones saw that the woman ones were beautiful. So they married them, that is, engaged in sexual pleasure seeking with them, because no man can resist a beautiful woman, oh that women were born ugly so not able to tempt weak willed men!

And the Nephilim saw all the fun that was being had and joined in… and who were the Nephilim? Ah mythology is so much fun, it seems that the Nephilim were evil people, fallen people, perhaps even fallen angels jealous of God’s newest creation, humans. They do appear time and again in the Old Testament as the source of sin and alienation from God, a testament to the people of God to remain faithful or death and destruction is bound to follow.

Anyway, let’s continue with Noah, the flood and its aftermath. That mythology is a bit easier to follow.

So God was displeased with what he saw was happening, people were having way too much fun and too busy to recognise all the good things He had done for them, so he decided that everyone had to go, kill them all, drown them and everything else He had earlier said was so good. But He changed His mind because there was one family that was still faithful to Him and they would be saved, start over, a small family and a breeding pair of all the animals would rebuild that which God was about to destroy.

Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, warned of the coming deluge dutifully built an ark, herded the animals on board and together with their wives survived the forty days and nights of the worst rain storm imaginable, even worse than the flooding due to climate change we are witnessing today, such a deluge that it took a hundred days for the waters to receded and a new land to emerge from the waters.

As it is when we put men and women together, or even males and females of any species, somehow, they breed and the descendants of Noah and his sons and their wives did just that so prolifically that they formed the foundation of three distinct ‘nation’ groups, Semites, Hamites and Japhetites which spread out across what we now call the Middle East. I know, the world is a little larger than the Middle East, but mythology is not always (or is that ever) logical.

Anyway, lots of different family group grew side by side over time and did not always get along too well with each other and through the various groupings we end up with Abraham who was originally called Abram leave the Mesopotamian city of Ur with his wife and a few servants on camels which were not known to be used for domesticated for another 600 or so years, to wend his way to what today is known as Israel, or Palestine. The people of Mesopotamia were descendants of Shem, and that language group became known as Semites. The people who Abraham, yes he was Abraham by that time, he had had a bit of a fight with God, finished off with a limp an new expanded version of his name and a newfound virility in his old age, to finally sire two sons, one with his wife and the other with his wife’s maid servant, were also descendants of Shem, also Semites, but from various of Shem’s sons, and so were a kind of substrata of Semites.

Phew.

We need to move on a bit through both history and unfolding mythologies to finally get to where this confusion over the meaning of Semite and Antisemite comes from.

Abraham’s children were pretty prolific breeders, eventually giving birth the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, each of which grew into numerous sects and divisions, causing more than enough conflict of who or what God is and what that all means, but a telling moment in time was around 90CE.

The Roman Empire ruled over a vast area, from present day England to Egypt and into the Mediterranean Basin, into the Byzantine and well into the Arabian Peninsula. They ruled through governors and the presence of the largest military force yet known in history. And in about 90CE a group of religious leaders and intellectuals kicked up a bit of a fuss in the remote city of Jerusalem. They had their own, different religion and did not think it right to bow down to the invaders and make sacrifices in the form of taxes to their supreme leader, the Ceasar, their God. They would only bow down to their own God the creator God. So, there was a bit of a kerfuffle, their temple was sacked, destroyed and a few people had their noses put out of joint, were expelled from the city, oh more than that, expelled from the Empire.

That was the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora.

It needs to be noted and probably underlined, highlighted with bright fluorescent hi light markers that it was the Jewish religious leaders who were expelled. Not the every day, hardworking Jewish carpenter, fisherman, farmer and so forth. They were needed to provide food and labour for the Roman overlords. Listening to the tales of the Diaspora one would easily believe that all Jewish people left, but as the Israel historian Shlomo Sand points out in his book The Invention of the Jewish People, it, throughout history has been that only the leaders, the thinkers, the religious leaders posed a danger to the authority of an invading Imperial force, the invaded people were invariably farmers, fishermen, graziers, food producers and the invaders needed food to feed their armies.

A modern-day example was the invasion of the Netherlands by Germany in 1940. The Netherlands were one of the invaded breadbaskets to feel the Nazi war machine.

And so the rabbis and priests left, travelled north and into Eastern Europe, taking with them their religion, proselytising, converting ‘heathens’ to the promise of salvation from their sins, spreading Judaism into the region, and conflicting with the various political and religious changes which occurred through the following two thousand or so years, constantly living on the edge of the mainstream wherever they went.

The original rabbis and priests would have been defined as Semite. They were, according to the mythology referred to, descendants of Shem. The new converts not so much. The biblical lineage or mythology does not seem to consider their origins, but they were not Semitic peoples, the ones remaining, farming the land and two thousand years later looking through the fence surrounding Gaza, enclosing them from their traditional lands, the Palestinians may actually have a stronger claim to the term Semite than the new settlers who have come from Europe to claim the Zionist Homeland.

So it is interesting to have the term Antisemitic being used when it is seen actually misused, a complete inversion of the original meaning of the term.

It was in my mind to use the word ‘sorry’ in concluding because I have played loosely with a mythology, even dared to call mythology what is foundational to what many believe to be the foundational stories of their faith/s, but no, I am not sorry at all when I see those faith/s being used as an excuse for genocide, as an excuse to assert some kind of exceptionalism that leads to acts of terror against those who do not share a particular interpretation of that mythology, that devalues lives which are contrary to the lives the religious fundamentalists insist on to the point that they can be sent off to their final judgement, to face the eternal punishments for non-adherence to mythological beliefs.

And to so misuse the term Semite to render it an obtuse meaning, complete reversal of what it is just another obscenity on the bizarre nature of conflict over unprovable claims of righteous superiority which allows so much suffering for others.

Yesterday I was ignorant.

I had received, unsolicited, a YouTube video about the dangers of GMO which is in the Covid vaccinations most of us have had. My ignorance stemmed from not understanding that GMO is different that vaccination. So I spent about three minutes Googling GMO and vaccinations, and Google came up with an incredibly long list of scientific articles, peer reviewed, from respected scientific and medical journals which seemed to link the two terms together, and more than that show research which confirmed the lifesaving results of GMO vaccinations.

I had seriously dismissed all the hoo-haa conspiracy stuff that flooded the internet during the Covid days, but gee whizz, I am ignorant it seems, or could it be just not all that thrilled about living my life under the clouds of conspiracy theories that seem to occupy too many minds.

Today I am WOKE.

But from the same person, this morning I was ‘woke’, sorry, it was capitalised ‘WOKE’, and in case I didn’t understand what was meant it was ‘Willfully Overlooking Knowable Evidence’. So I could interpret that as not only being ignorant, but also dumb.

I thought perhaps I should check with Google to determine what WOKE really means, and it turns out to something quite positive.

WOKE it turns out, according to the Cambridge Dictionary means ‘aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality.’ Mmmm, that does not sound like willfully overlooking knowable evidence, but rather engaging with the knowable evidence to recognise disadvantage or discrimination when it is evident, so that attitudes can change.

I thanked the person for the complimentary label applied to me, and thanked him for giving me the motivation to write.

When I look at the world we live in and the changes which I have witnessed in my lifetime, recognising Aboriginal people as being people and including them in the population of human habitants of Australia, and giving them the right to vote, the wave of feminism which saw women achieve a degree of equality…. yes, a DEGREE of equality, to see homosexuality decriminalised, abortion rights, voluntary assisted dying for terminally ill patients, freedom to worship or not worship the god(s) of choice, the privilege of living in a wealthy country in fact, per person, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and so many more positive changes we have seen, most of which remain under the threat of being reversed.

In economic terms we have seen the assets of the family home reach such heady heights that most homeowners will die millionaires just because the home they bought when it was affordable is now out of reach for the average worker. I recall the price of the first humble home I purchased in 1970, $12,380.00. My wages were about $100 per week or $5,200 per year. I don’t know how much that house would fetch on today’s market, but at least $600,000 does not sound unrealistic. IN 1970 the house was around 2.5 times my annual income. Today it is valued at around 9 times average annual income. So it has become almost impossible to enter the market without some serious help.

The cost of buying a house has become so expensive that people are forced to rent as they try to save for the deposit of their first home, but rental costs have ballooned. Where four years ago rent on a two bedroomed home where I live was around $240 per week, now almost $500 per week. The minimum take home wage, after tax is around $600 per week.

Poverty is rife. And nothing seems to be being done about it. Being WOKE means I recognise the problem and can maybe pressure governments to do something about it… maybe. I am led to believe this is a wealthy country, but what I see is that those who have the wealth are very much committed to keeping it, even make the pot a bit larger by reducing their taxes and pressuring governments for more of their special interests to be funded, like the government contributions to private schools or any other worthy cause that would benefit those who already have the most.

Being WOKE, I refuse to live in fear.

Fear of the unknown is a great political tool, and the unknown is the danger posed by those who would board an unseaworthy vessel in Indonesia to get across to Australia, the land of milk and honey. It takes a lot to leave a homeland which has become unsafe, where persecution is rife, where difference is scorned. And so, since the pathway to Australia House or the nearest Australian Embassy is not all that accessible, other means are sought to find the desired freedom, only to find that on arrival they are immediately sent off to an offshore detention centre, never to land back in Australia.

The model of sending the unwanted off to remote places has become an example for others to follow, those despairing refugees seeking solace in Great Britain are now boarded a plane to Rwanda. We cannot allow criminals to just come whenever they feel like it. Yet when we look at the desperate people who have arrived here in the past, refugees from WW!!, boat people escaping post war Vietnam and so many others who have arrived here from war torn or intolerant places, escaping religious persecution or ethnic power struggles which have resulted in bloody civil wars or the effects of climate change which has made their homeland uninhabitable, they have made valuable contributions, socially, economically, culturally. Australia is a far better country for the diversity which such immigrants have brought. But please don’t tell anyone that, especially those who are afraid of people who look different, speak different languages, dress differently, worship differently.

And of course, those ethnically diverse migrants bring their self-righteous religious hatreds with them. Much has been made of the knife attacks in NSW in recent days, video footage of the young man attacking the preacher and the quest to find those who rioted as a result of that attack, not to mention the search for other radicalised youths who may pick up a knife and find someone else who has insulted their belief making them worthy of death.

A bit of perspective here. This year, and the year is about 20 weeks old, and 30 women have been killed by men, partners, former partners, men not known to them. Two preachers survived a knife attack, and the attacker is under arrest. The attack in the church was motivated by the firebrand preacher presenting sermons which were broadcast on the internet, available for anyone who wanted to access them, and the sermons were critical of Islam, gay rights and a number of other issues. In earlier times the only people who heard the sermons were those who were in the congregation, in the church as the sermon was delivered. The preacher wants the attack and no doubt his existing and still to come sermons to be available online so he can use his position to not only preach to his congregation but also have those vitriolic words available to anyone who happens to trip over them as they check their social media accounts.

I find that a bit problematic. The inciting of religious difference has consequences. Earlier this week Salman Rushdie was interviewed on 7:30. He has released a new book ‘Knife’, about an attack on him where he was stabbed multiple time including in his right eye. Yes, I am speculating, but about 36 years ago his book ‘Satanic Verses’ was published and since there is in it a dream sequence where one of the protagonists’ dreams of some contact with an angel, it was deemed blasphemous, and a fatwa was issued to kill Salman Rushdie. Memories are long and religious dogma includes the repeating of stories from generation to generation. So an attempt was made on Rushdie’s life in front of an audience he was scheduled to address. (I once asked a local Imam whether he had read Satanic Verses as he was telling me how evil the book was. He hadn’t read it and assured me that he definitely would not read it. What a shame. If he had read the book, he may have enjoyed a really good belly laugh as the absurdities of the plot evolved, and the insult to Islam was not found because there is no insult to Islam.)

So a young radicalised person attacks a preacher, who was possibly instrumental in his radicalisation, just as the Ayatollah Khomeini in issuing the fatwa was instrumental, 35 years later inciting the attack which almost cost Rushdie his life.

So the WOKE me looks at the issues that are around me, that in one way or another touch my life and try to do something to let humanity shine, the anti-WOKE people of the world stoke fear of difference, strive to develop an orthodoxy which marginalises difference.

I wear the WOKE label with pride.

Having worked for many years with a diverse number of people from different ethnic groups and religions, and some with no religion, I was impressed that despite the differences, everybody seemed to get along. Being interested, I asked people about their faith, and found that people held their faith and cultural traditions firmly and recognised that others were free to worship their gods so long as that freedom was universal. Explaining this to an evangelical person one time I was assured that his faith, his religion was the only true religion.

The sense of rightness, (can I call it self-righteousness?), left no room for dissent.

And herein lies the foundation for discrimination which leads to intolerance and violence.

My god is better than your god!

Earlier this week, a fire-brand preacher was attacked by a knife-wielding teenager.

The preacher is well loved in his local church and has attracted a substantial YouTube following with very outspoken views on homosexuality, conspiracy theories and Islam. The young attacker is Muslim and upset that the preacher maligned his prophet.

In Jesus name, the young attacker and whoever sent him has been forgiven by the injured preacher.

To accept forgiveness, a person must accept they have done wrong, but how can the young man accept he has done wrong when his religion encourages violence in defence of his faith, and how sincere is the act of forgiveness when the preacher will no doubt continue his vitriol against Islam, the LGBTIQA+ community and the various other click bait topics he raises in his broadcast sermons.

The young man is in custody, yet to be charged but was on a good behaviour bond over a previous knife wielding incident, and will no doubt face the children’s court to answer to criminal charges. But will he accept the forgiveness offered by the injured preacher when in his mind, his actions were in defence of his religion?

Is the act of forgiveness predicated on the acceptance of Jesus as saviour, that the young man must accept the act of forgiveness as that of the ‘crucified Lord’, but would be void if there is no conversion to the Christian faith?

Is the act of forgiveness aimed at reconciliation, that the young man and the preacher can coexist, side by side as it were, in an atmosphere devoid of rancour, devoid of the judgementalism each religion places on other religions?

The history between the two religions, the Assyrian Orthodox Church and Islam goes back a long, long way, the church is one of the earliest Christian denominations, formed in what is now Iraq, Turkey and Syria, and pre-existed Islam by several hundred years. The two religions have lived side by side but in a rather tenuous environment with waves of persecution conducted. In the last century the Assyrians suffered the 1915 Genocide by the Ottoman Turks, leading them to flee to Northern Iraq and North East Syria, and this century with the rise of ISIS, a further brutal persecution.

When religious leaders preach sermons seemingly designed to foster hatred or at least division, to claim a superiority over others who are not like ‘us’, violence will follow. When those sermons are broadcast to whoever has access to a smart phone or computer the voice resonates through the dark web and incites reactions.

What is particularly sad in this case, is that we have an immigrant community which has brought with it the divisions which led to their desire to leave their homeland because of war and religious discrimination and have bought with them the very attitudes they are trying to escape from.

I’m not much good at sums, but I can imagine the cost of repairing damaged egos as the allegations of rape and the ripple effect of that accusation hits the various courts around the country. The cost-of-living crisis is not being noticed by the army of lawyers involved.

Just before the 2019 election a young research assistant claimed to have been raped in Parliament House but does not pursue the allegation because of the impact it may have on the up-coming election, however, about a year later the accusation is made and a work colleague is charged with rape. And the gravy train starts chugging slowly gathering pace as snouts go into the very deep money trough seeking to repair the damages done.

And now a mere five years later the saga may, or may not, be coming to some kind of conclusion.

Throughout this saga there have been claim and counter claim of malfeasance, a juror doing some independent research causing the trial of the accused to be aborted, an inquiry into the public prosecutor handling of the case, police records leaked or withheld, the employer’s minister swearing at the complainant and later aggrieved because of a social media post she claims maligned her, the free to air TV channels buying exclusive interview rights, and all the while the most expensive lawyers circling to monetise this saga for all it is worth.

An interesting cast of characters claiming victimhood.

Victim No.1: Brittany Higgins

The young woman who claimed to have been raped is vilified at every turn. In what many see as fair after her (ongoing) ordeal, she walked away with a couple of million dollars on leaving her employment in the Commonwealth Parliament.

Victim No2: Bruce Lehrmann

Perhaps that is what is most concerning for the young man accused of raping the young woman. The sex, if it happened at all was so lousy that he claims it didn’t happen, so how come she walks away with millions while his ‘reputation’ is traduced while not actually being named. Seeing The Project interview his immediate response was that he recognised himself and so that was going to be worth millions for defamation of his character.

So far, it has netted him a few dollars too. Settlement with the ABC for broadcasting a National Press Club speech regarding The Project interview was $150,000, News Ltd for daring to publish a few words on this saga, $295,000, and the price for Chanel 7’s exclusive interview, free rent for a year in some very humble digs with coastal views near Sydney, golf in Tasmania, meals any normal person would take about a week to consume, expensive massages, recreational drugs and a bit of comfort from a prostitute or two. Rough tally so far, close on half a million dollars.

Is that enough to cover his mounting legal bills?

I wonder whether the ATO would see that as renumeration. The tax bill could take a fair slice of it.

Victim No.3: Shane Drumgold

In the meantime, there are of course the costs of the inquiry into the DPP handling of the case, again with a bit of skullduggery as the report was leaked to The Australian before being formally handed to the courts, not to mention lunches and numerous contacts with the press… nothing to see here though. The victim is sort of guilty of not having done a really good job in gathering and presenting evidence for the trial which was aborted.

Victim No.4: Linda Reynolds

And the minster involved has remortgaged her home to sue her ex-employee for damage to her ego over comments posted on social media despite having called Ms Higgins “a lying cow.” That case is currently before the courts in Western Australia.

Another sage awaits Mr Lehrmann as he faces more rape charges in Queensland in a couple of months’ time.

For five years this gravy train has been running. When will it stop, when will the dented egos be either panel beaten with a shit load of dollars back into shape or that evidence for a character to be defamed is insufficient for the purse strings to be loosened?

It will be interesting to see the verdict of this on Monday, as a price to repair the damaged goods is set or whether there actually was defamation of Mr Lehrmann’s character. Someone commented that should the court finds in Mr Lehrmann’s favour, the smallest denomination of Australian money is a 5-cent piece.

Truth be told, we really would like other people to be a little more like we are. We have a seemingly inherent bias for others to be like us; to think as we do, to live as we do, to behave as we do, to believe what we believe.

We really are quite unaware of these biases, or discriminations, until we are confronted by them.

Normal behaviour and normal beliefs are those we grew up with, the values our parents and extended family espoused defined normal for us as we grew up and it is not until we were confronted by difference that we actually noticed that not everybody is like us. The ‘normal’ we grew up with was reinforced by decisions such as whether we were churched or not, the religion of our family and how strongly that was held, the schools we attended, whether they were public or private, whether it was for a higher standard of education or whether it was to confirm the ‘rightness’ of the faith the family held.

Those outside our definition of normal were seen as different, somehow less than us.

The important question which flows from this is how we deal with difference.

Each morning I try to walk on a nearby beach. Low tide is a particular favourite time as there is more beach and access to parts which are otherwise underwater or pummelled by incoming waves. And most mornings are met with greetings from other early morning beach walkers.

This morning I was greeted by a Christian lady who immediately started talking about the wonders her God presents for us to enjoy, the peacefulness of walking in a natural environment, to take in the freshness of the day. When questioned about her God she went into His judgement of people, how believers are ‘children of God’ (and all that implies for those who are not). She is heaven bound, apparently.

I raised with her the question about God condoning genocide, and it appears that it’s OK; those who are not God’s people are not protected by His laws. She is totally with Israel in their fight with the ‘terrorist’ Palestinians. There was an immediate reference to the October attack but using that as a defence against the continuing atrocity against those in Gaza and the West Bank.

I then asked her about marriage equality, is it OK for homosexuals to marry? Apparently not if they are God’s children, but if they were God’s children the question of their homosexuality would not arise.

The sense of separateness, exclusiveness, sanctimoniousness was palpable. If only people would listen to the Word of God and (probably) be just like her, the world would be a better place.

I have heard this time and again throughout my life. Intolerance masked by a sense of piety, a belief in one’s absolute rightness. From a Calvinist view, the belief that people are ‘elect of God’, chosen by God to be His. Or that Baptism marks one for life as one of God’s children. Or all sins are forgiven so long as one confesses and goes through the sanctions insisted by the priest, (how many ‘Hail Mary’s’ that one?) or to be circumcised on the eighth day after the boy was born, or whatever marking, visible or invisible is used to claim to be one of God’s people.

And so we have the question of who may teach our children, and it seems that the various religious bodies which control faith-based schools are adamant that they have the right, demand the right to be selective, discriminatory in choosing who should teach at their schools.

The right to discriminate, to reinforce the values of the religious body which operate the school.

How well has that gone in the past? Recently an expose of an elite school in Sydney where a teacher was employed despite it being known that he had been emailing female students, suggesting sex… threesomes, comments about genitalia... nothing to see here, he was going to teach at an all-boys school, so that stuff would not be an issue. I suppose he ‘ticked every box’ regarding religious orthodoxy.

Or when we reflect on the Royal Commission into child abuse, no red flags are raised about staff in any number of church-based organisations, schools included.

The screening of staff is necessary, standards need to be established, not based on some religious orthodoxy but rather on the teaching ability and interaction the teacher demonstrates with their students, that quality teaching becomes the criteria for employment. Not some difference which is demonstrated by adherence to a particular faith and how that difference becomes a basis for judgement and discrimination. But this of course will not be reflected in the way students are treated, especially those who are different… be it different colour of skin, different view on sexuality, different view of creation of evolution and so forth… of course it won’t, will it?

Why is there even a need for the right to discriminate? Have these educated people not learned anything from history? To entrench discrimination at the level of teacher is to entrench the orthodoxy which allows contempt for this who are different. Surely the differences which are in the communities we live in need to be reflected in everyday life, and that includes in the school environment. Otherwise we reinforce intolerance, we hide behind a veil of piety that allows for discrimination and judgement on people who do not conform to the rigidity of the orthodoxy of the school or its religious controlling body.

The Religious Discrimination Bill, in draft form has been presented to open the way for consideration in the Parliament and Senate to ensure that those who choose to hate can do so legally.

At least that is what is looks like to this citizen. Religious schools can discriminate when employing staff, ensuring that all teachers comply with a morality standard and that will inevitably affect the way education is delivered, especially when dealing with ethics and morality.

How easy would it be to make the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which Australia was involved in setting up and is a signatory to, actually make that law. There are thirty articles in the Declaration and Article 2 is an overarching statement:

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Wow, that covers a whole lot of things to not hate in other people, to respect other people despite those differences. And when we read through the other twenty-nine articles, these areas of difference are clearly expanded on to ensure the dignity and rights of everyone we may meet on life’s journey.

So where is the problem, why must we need to consider Religious Discrimination when clearly the faith(s) we hold or do not hold are to be respected by everyone we meet as we respect the faith(s) others hold or choose not to hold? It seems the problem may well lie in the Holy Books or how these are interpreted, and interpretations enforced.

Throughout history, going back to ancient days, leaders have validated their power as being given by a higher power, a god or at times a legion of gods and have used that validation to honour some and subjugate others, to even have the power of life or death over their subjects and any who would challenge their authority. Leadership has two primary functions; that of Protector and of Provider. when we read the Holy Books, The Bible, The Koran, The Talmud, there are teachings which discriminate against those who do not fall into some pretty strict categories, dress codes are prescribed, sexual intercourse restrictions, sacrifices ordered, slaughter of other peoples prescribed to protect the legitimacy of the originator of power, the God who demands obedience. Even the killing of children, as in the plagues of Egypt (Exodus 11, 5-6), in the war against the Midianites (Numbers 31, 17-18) or in the destruction of Babylon (Psalm 137, 8-9).

As Protector, today we see this played out in the political debates where people who dare to arrive here seeking asylum through the back door, so to speak, are seen as threats and quickly removed to some remote island, being punished for daring to think we may treat them with a bit more humanity than those who they have fled from, or to build alliances with other countries, the ANZAC treaty or AUKUS, or trade relationships such as with our SE Asian neighbours.

As provider, the various cost of living issues we face, employment and renumeration in employment, the social safety net provided through pensions and other benefits for those in need.

Not much has changed through the long line of history, leadership protected and provided and when that failed, leaders were overthrown either through invading forces or internal uprisings. It is only with the rise of democracy that we see power appears to have shifted to the people who ostensibly choose their leadership. But where that leadership was validated by some god or other, or the power questioned on the basis of interpretation of the scriptures used to validate the leadership, things could get a bit nasty. Martin Luther challenging the interpretation of Catholic teaching followed by Jean Calvin’s re-interpretations and then the Anabaptists and a number of other break away teachings led to the Thirty Year War (1618-1638) where millions died as a result of different beliefs within Christianity.

The two-thousand-year discrimination of Jews because they based their faith on Old Testament teachings as Europe became Christian, homosexuals discriminated against because of their sexuality, a capital crime. Men were hanged for being gay. Enslavement of African people going back in time, seemingly forever, or the enslavement of those swept up for being on the wrong side of a war.

Dare I mention the colonial period where European technological advancement saw the taking of new territories, ‘discovering’ whole continents to provide the ever-increasing demands of a burgeoning middle class. And ‘Christianising’ the Aboriginal peoples of the newly conquered lands presenting them with the forgiving grace of a gracious God as their lands were plundered, their women raped, and men murdered.

Discrimination has been an issue as long as there are differences between people, the differences clearly stated in Article 2 of the Declaration of Human Rights. But people want to discriminate, they are fearful of difference, especially those who have positions of power and influence are fearful that their power and influence may be eroded.

A Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was established in January 2013 and the findings were horrific. The very institutions which were found to be complicit in the sexual abuse of children, Christian institutions from across the spectrum of Christianity are calling for protection to discriminate. And for that we need legislation called a Religious Discrimination Bill?

I think a far better response to discrimination is to make the UN Declaration of Human Rights law in Australia.

Holidaying down at Busselton in the last week, enjoying time catching up with family and taking opportunity to walk for miles on the pristine beach.

Busselton is in the State parliamentary district of Vasse, one of the few Liberal held seats in the W.A. lower house. And there are plans afoot to build a wind farm 35km offshore.

Shock horror!

As I was strolling along, back to the jetty where hopefully the cafe would be open, I was asked whether I liked the view… pointing to the horizon, a line separating the dark blue of the water and the lighter blue of the morning sky, I was assured that the plans to change that view with ugly wind turbine towers was going to happen… the line would be interrupted by a series of wind turbines, 15 to 70km off shore at between Mandurah and Bunbury, the most southerly turbines about 70km north of where we were standing, in other words, the view he was extolling, which would only be ruined if you stood on the nearby newly constructed hotel of about six stories high, to see, on a good day, the most southerly of the 200 turbines, maybe, just the very top of the arc as the turbine rotated, but only using very powerful binoculars.

I asked the person apart from the view, what other concerns he had about the proposed plan. Killing of sea birds was one objection. The expense of the project, reliability of power supply were just some of the further objections he raised. The conversation flowed on to solar panels and their contribution to renewable energy, batteries and so forth, and again, negativity was the underlying sentiment of his responses. The short active life of solar panels and that they finish off in landfill, the unreliability of power generation, only while the sun is shining, batteries are not adequate to the task, and so on and on he rambled until I saw someone wandering down with a coffee cup in hand and begged off.

I was more than a little disturbed by the gentleman’s objections to renewable energies and sought a quick google to do casual fact check, and surprisingly, his fears appear to be unfounded.

Firstly, the impact of the turbines on birds, yes, it is agreed that some birds do get killed by the rotating turbine blades. Birds also fly into high rise glass towers and die, they even fly into my windows in the evening when lights are on inside and the glass doors are closed. And yes, it is not a good thing to see, but when we consider the area which the wind farm will occupy as a part of the ocean, the danger is minimal and will have been considered in the planning.

Secondly, the expense and reliability of getting the power to shore using underwater cables. Listening to the objection, I thought this may be the first time ever that this problem had been considered, that we were likely to electrocute the marine life, kill off the fish and endanger the lives of surfers and swimmers with electricity seeping into the ocean.

Thirdly, this is not new technology, the first offshore wind farm was constructed in 1991 and had an operational life of over 35 years, Denmark’s fishing industry has not collapsed due to fish stocks being electrocuted. Currently there are about 290 offshore wind farms operating around the world with 26 more under construction. China has the most offshore turbine capacity followed by United Kingdom, Germany and Vietnam.

Fourthly, longevity. Wind farms have a designed minimum operating life of 30 years and are about 90% recyclable or able to be repurposed after decommissioning.

Another objection raised was the recycling of solar panels, that they end up in landfill, creating more problems after their useful life.

Up to 95% of materials used in solar panels are recyclable and has become an important industry both here in Australia and wherever solar panels have become an important part of the power generating mix. Panels have a useful life of between 20 and 30 years and contain both easy to recycle components such as aluminium frames and glass, and other metals including copper and silver. The cost for recycling is around $20 per panel. So yes, it costs money to get rid of the old ones to replace them when they are no longer doing the job. But they no longer end in landfill.

I was told batteries won’t do the job in providing power when the sun isn’t shining, or the wind isn’t blowing. Tell that to my friend who recently installed solar panels and battery and uses that to power his new EV as well as his day-to-day power needs in his home and shed. Tell that to the people of South Australia who have batteries connected to the grid after the epic fail of several years ago. Or the bank of batteries coming online in the Kwinana hud south of Perth. But some people don’t want to know. they’d rather use… COAL was the answer given to my question when I asked another local. Not surprising really since the coal mining centre of Collie is nearby. I half expected nuclear as being the preferred option.

And the alternative offer by the federal opposition: Nuclear.

Time and again the leader of the opposition has tried to goad the Prime Minister on the election campaign to comment on reducing the cost of electricity, yet the proposition by the opposition is to build very expensive nuclear power plants and has now asked that the question should be put to the electorate as a plebiscite. Two questions actually, do we support Nuclear Power Station and would we like one in our back yard. I can just see the results of such a plebiscite, yes, absolutely need nuclear power, but heck no, not in my back yard.

Perhaps the opposition leader is still basking in the afterglow of having won the race debate, the defeat of the Voice Referendum, that he should be proposing a plebiscite on Nuclear Power. However, his comments regarding the Marriage Equality plebiscite are interesting, commenting that the ‘postal survey had worked, was appropriate for “fundamental change” to society, but should not be repeated. (Unless it is my idea?). I think a popular vote on what was a human rights issue – equality before the law – was a very bad idea.’

I would think that if the Marriage Equality plebiscite were, as he sates, a human rights issue, the law that was changed would have been one which denied a human right and therefore needed changing. Which then leads onto the proposed plebiscite to gain endorsement for a change to the law which would allow nuclear power plants to operate in Australia sometime in the next twenty years or so since that is how long it will take according to the various commentators on this topic, coal fired plants will have to keep operating and CO2 emissions will keep rising as renewable energy sources are rejected.

Cultures evolve, the lives we live today are different than the lives we used to live, very little remains of what used to be, but some people wish for the good old days, when we knew what was what… except of course that is illusionary.

So what is culture?

A quick Google search comes up with this definition from the Oxford Dictionary:

Culture is not fixed, but constantly changes, evolves, as communities and society change, evolve.

Last weekend Sydney hosted the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras which started as a small group of protestors formed to contribute to the international gay celebrations in 1978. The protests continued and more and more people were arrested but by April 1979 the NSW parliament repealed the legislation which allowed the arrests. About 3,000 people marched in an incident free parade in 1979, the first officially sanctioned Mardi Gras.

In 1972 a gay academic, George Duncan was murdered, the crime was thought to have been committed by undercover police but sparked calls for reform leading to a 1975 Act in the Federal Parliament making homosexual acts between consenting adults legal.

It took more than a decade, but eventually all states followed the Federal lead.

Interestingly, the crime homosexual men were charged with was ‘buggery’. There was no law to prohibit lesbians engaging in consensual sex.

Forty-two years later a plebiscite was held which overwhelmingly determined than gay and lesbian couples could legally marry, affording those couples the legal security that marriage affords.

The gossip pages of the 1960s and into the 70s included the law courts reports in the daily newspapers. Divorces were subjected to open court hearings where a ‘matrimonial offence’ needed to be proved for a divorce to be granted. Matrimonial offences included domestic violence and adultery, so the salacious details of martial shenanigans were headlined in the daily press.

Australia was not the only jurisdiction to have a ‘fault’ based divorce system, it was common throughout the world. The Irish actor Richard Harris was accused of adultery with a named person in 1969. He pleaded innocent to that charge, claiming he had not been adulterous with the named lady, but reputedly offered the court a list, several pages long of people he had engaged with adulterously.

Christian Nationalist in the USA want to return to a fault-based divorce where adultery or domestic violence needs to be proven before a divorce cab be granted.

Literature which featured adultery or other acts of questionable morality were banned up to the 1970s, including Ulysses by James Joyce, Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D H Lawrence and Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint.

Movies too have been in the censor’s sights since as early as 1912 where the concern was about the effects of such films on female audiences. Included were All Quiet on the Western Front, and films about bush ranging. The Blonde Captive from 1931 was banned being seen as prejudicial to Aboriginal Australians. Many films depicting sexual violence and child sexual abuse continue to be banned, but the creation of an R rating made many previously banned films available since the 1990s.

The music played on radio has for years been subjected to censor oversight. The song ‘Greased Lightening’ had the line ‘it ain’t no shit’ cut from radio airplay, but from the same film the Italian curse ‘fongool’ (tamest translation is Fuck You, a less tame translation refers to an annal version of Fuck You) from Look at me I’m Sandra Dee was somehow not as offensive. Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl was changed from Brown Skinned Girl. Loretta Lynn’s 1975 song The Pill was condemned for daring to discuss birth control. John Lennon’s Imagine was hated by religious groups for daring to imagine there is no heaven, The Stones’ Satisfaction was far too sexual for tender ears to hear, but 40 years after its initial release was OK to perform at the SuperBowl half time show in 2006 to rapturous applause. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is a drug anthem isn’t it?, so air play was banned on the BBC.

Abortions in the 1960s were illegal but available, the criminal sanctions which, dependent on the state or territory included life imprisonment. While abortion was common, before 1969:

“Women who had means could attend a skilled abortionist; otherwise they went to someone less skilled or tried to abort themselves.

The alternative was for the single young ladies to be sent away for a few months and return, without the child. A childless couple in our church had adopted a child born illegitimately. In fact the birth certificate was stamped with the designation “ILLEGITIMATE”. There were special places for such births to occur in, one was a place called NGALA, others were majestic looking buildings set in manicured gardens, monasteries, where the unfortunate young ladies were cared for until the birthing, and sent home, as though nothing had happened, the child taken away to be sent to an adopting couple.

Despite numerous attempts at decriminalising abortion, it was not until 1998 that abortion could be legally performed in Western Australia, the first jurisdiction to allow it, but with restrictions. In September 2023 abortion was fully decriminalised for terminations up to 23 weeks’ gestation and after 23 weeks with the agreement of the patient’s primary practitioner and another practitioner.

Abortion is now legal in all states and territories, but that right was hard fought and as seen in the debate in the West Australian Parliament in 2023, very much a contested right.

Aboriginal recognition and rights, women’s rights including equal pay for equal work are targets to wind back the clock. even as recently demonstrated in the preselection for the replacement candidate in the seat of Cook. In nomination for a safe seat, women are overlooked. A woman needs to work harder to win her seat and work harder to retain it.

Across the spectrum we can define as culture, in my lifetime we have seen many changes, I have listed some, but it seems that there are many seeking political power who would like to wind back the clock a few decades or more. This is particularly apparent in the Liberal Party where far-right candidates are endorsed, candidates who will use their religion, their faith as a political weapon, with an agenda to reverse the freedoms and rights which have been won in my short lifetime.

I do believe that if a candidate is a Christian and sees that their commitment to their faith is to promote their values as policy, they should do so through a distinctly Christian political party. Their alternative, when confronted by legislation which they cannot support because of their faith but is legislation which their electorate supports, is to do what the then Premier of Western Australia did when it came to voting on the 1998 abortion bill which had the numbers to get up, he abstained. He could not in good conscious vote for the bill which was against his religious belief but could not be seen to be opposed to his electorate’s will. In some ways it was a bit of a cop out, but he found himself between a rock and a hard place and chose to absent himself at the time of the vote.

The new government in New Zealand seems to be actively winding back the clock, discriminating against the Maori population on matters of language and health provision and further for the wider population in repealing the laws which outlaw tobacco sales. Other rights will be threatened to in that case promote white supremacy. The acrimony of the Voice debate and subsequent defeat of the referendum indicates that the fear of recognising First Nations peoples and giving them a Constitutionally enshrined voice to Parliament is a bridge too far. Constantly the race card was thrown in that debate, not so much publicly but in private conversations there was repeated reference to their unsuitability to know how to be a good citizen. (I cannot quote the words but will stay on the polite see of criticism.)

The last bill Prime Minister Morrison brought before the house before the last election was a religious discrimination bill to protect Christians from discrimination where there is no religious discrimination except that which is perceived by the self-righteous, to allow them the right to vilify those who do not uphold the standards they find hard to uphold.

A recent discussion regarding the fear of sharing the female toilet with a trans person was interesting. The complainant was very vocal until asked how many trans people she knew. The number was none, so the fear was totally concocted, made up. as so many of the fears that are promoted to wind the clock back.

Culture evolves, it changes over time, but that change can go forward or backward, no gains made can be considered permanent, we need to be constantly vigilant to ensure that the rights we have in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are not threatened. These include civil and political rights, the right to life, liberty, free speech and privacy. It also includes economic, social and cultural rights. In other words, to be who we are, to believe what we believe, to not be vilified for who we may be, but to not vilify those we disagree with. The rights and freedoms we have, need to be the rights and freedoms we accord to others.