A term I had not come across before but can cover a multitude of sins: Cognitive Bias.

Reading an article in the Guardian this morning, there was a report on an inquest into the death of a man who had died from perforated stomach ulcers a day after being sent home from a hospital visit. The reason a man died from perforated stomach ulcers was because he was misdiagnosed with cannaboid hyperemesis syndrome, in other words, he was thought to be high as a kite from smoking some quality hash. He was an Aboriginal man, and the doctor, explaining his misdiagnosis based his diagnosis on the first impression he had formed because “There is a lot of marijuana use in the community. It’s just pattern recognition.”

The seemingly never ending saga of the killing of young Aboriginal man, Kumanjayi Walker, now with the inquest into his death in its eighteenth month, probing yet again the cultural issues which led to the death of this troubled young man, shot by a police officer who was acquitted of murdering him, who now fronts the coronial inquest questioning the inherent racism which appeared to have been part of the police culture in Alice Springs at the time of the shooting. Some of the text messages presented to the court indicate that Aboriginal people were not respected by the police, racist slurs and crude descriptions were normal discourse it seemed, reducing First Nations people to be seen as less than human. A perception which then normalises physically violent and verbally abusive behaviour.

The incarceration rate of First Nations people is outrageous. At 30 June, 2023 Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander prisoners accounted for 33% of all prisoners throughout Australia but are less than 4% of the population. Does that mean that First Nations people are more criminal than the immigrants who have taken their land?

I cannot remember where I was when I heard this, I think I was in the car on my way to work several years ago, but the former Premier of Western Australia mentioned that when comparing traffic infringements, those detected remotely through speed cameras, First Nations drivers were less likely to be caught speeding on the various cameras spread throughout the road network, but were far more likely to be charged for some offence or other through a traffic stop. I mentioned this at the time to a young Aboriginal work mate who told me that when he removed the Aboriginal flag from his car he was not pulled over for a random breath test or a licence check just for being on the road as happened frequently when the flag was on display. Each time the car was checked over. tyres, lights, seat belts, everything was checked and too often some small thing was found which resulted in a fine and a compulsory vehicle check.

Police presence in areas with a high Aboriginal population is more visible than in the quiet parts of suburbia, leading to a sense of intimidation, that there is a constant surveillance that is not evident in other parts of the suburbs.

First Nations people are as a group, the most disadvantaged in Australia. A lack of opportunity for employment, too much time and not enough money entrench a sense of ‘not good enough’, and the depression which flows from that sense of worthlessness, a sense of helplessness and hopelessness.

Drug and alcohol abuse are endemic in such environments, not just within First Nations communities, but in all places where the ‘Shit Life Syndrome’ is evident. (The term was coined to describe post-industrial communities in Britain where the good, well-paying jobs had gone and the people who remained were left in a post-industrial wasteland with few job prospects and very little money besides government relief payments.)

None of this is new, in fact it has been going on for over 236 years. Cognitive Bias toward Aboriginal people has been the defining attitude, a looking down the nose at those who are deemed to be lesser beings than the immigrants who have taken over the land. And last year we missed an opportunity to correct some of the misconceptions that have so marked our attitude and behaviour toward Aboriginals. It seems that ‘we have all the answers… but they just don’t get it’.

Time after time, study after study, the answers are the same, build more jails, heavier policing, ban alcohol, take the kids away from dysfunctional communities, one suggestion was to ‘just stop them from breeding’.

But it seems that those who know it all are not really good at listening. At understanding the anger which intergenerational grief and dispossession has allowed to fester as another set of edicts is thrown down to settle the lawlessness of kids running riot and men inflicting violence against women in alcohol fueled rages, just bring in more police, heavily armed with tasers and guns to take care of it.

But can we find hope in this apparent hopelessness?

It seems that there are some optimistic voices, if those at the top of the tree will come down and really listen, engage in active listening, as Judy Atkinson outlined in a TED talk in 2017, ‘The value of deep listening – The Aboriginal gift to the nation.’

“There is an anger across this nation that we choose not to acknowledge.

It is an anger fuelled by racism, prejudice, discrimination and poverty. A distressed discontent that is growing, not just here but around the world. But under anger is always grief…

There is a truth in this country we must confront as we move into maturity. The grief of separation and loss, of shame, of pain, deep and unresolved. A woundedness that is much more more than the commemoration of the Anzacs and much more than the celebration partying and boozing that we have on Australia Day. This country is more than that. It has to be. It holds the trauma of many people across many generations. The Indigenous. The invaders. The immigrants. All seeking refuge from pained disorder that we humans are so good at creating in this world.

“It is time we started the work of deep listening. We, all together, the ‘I’s coming to ‘we’. Working with each other for transformation. Listening. Listening deeply to one another in contemplative reciprocal relationships, a mindfulness to the multiple stories in the lands we call home… Miriam-Rose (Ungunmerr-Baumann) said ‘Dadirri is the Aboriginal gift to this nation, a gift that we all have been waiting for. it is the gift of listening.’

“If you accept this gift, as a nation we can all grow together.”

(Julianne Shultz. The Idea of Australia Page 89.)

The term Genocide was first used in 1945 to describe the deliberate, targeted killing of Jews by the German Nazi regime. It was a very specific term coined to describe the Nazi policies of systematic murder during the Holocaust combining the Greek word for race or tribe (geno) with the Latin word for killing (cide).

The word was first used in a legal setting during the Nuremberg Trials by a young lawyer, Benjamin Ferencz who was a chief prosecutor at those trials. A fresh faced young lawyer, just 27 years old, a small man, 5ft 2inches or just short of 1.6metres tall had to stand on a pile of books when he addressed the court so he could look over the lectern. Apart from using the word genocide, the phrase ‘crimes against humanity’ was used to place the actions of 22 men who oversaw and commandeered the Holocaust were seen to be tried not just as war criminals but criminals in a far deeper sense. War crimes happen in war, soldiers kill soldiers and bomb places where there may be ‘collateral damage’, but the Holocaust was an action aimed at eliminating people based on their race, their religion and their ideologies.

The German military, including the SS under the control of the Nazis were thorough in documenting their activities and reporting to the various government agencies including the ‘elimination of Jews, Gypsies and enemies of the Reich’, and these records were carefully archived and then used as evidence in prosecuting the case against those senior figures who were still alive and able to face the court.

As a result of the Second World War and the exposure of the inhumanity, the organised slaughter of about 13million people who were not soldiers fighting a war, as evidenced in the aftermath of the war, the opening of the death camps, the written records of those who reported their work to their superiors and the conducting of the Nuremberg Trial, a criminal trial, not a war crimes trial before impartial judges, the newly formed United Nations Organisation commissioned the Declaration of Human Rights which was presented to the General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948.

A further flow on from the Nuremberg Trials and the work of Ben Ferencz was the International Criminal Court in The Hague which recently heard charges against the State of Israel from South Africa over the devastation of Gaza and the treatment of the Palestinians who live in that enclave.

Unfortunately, crimes against humanity have continued despite the Declaration of Human Rights that all nations have signed up to. We witnessed the horrors of the Vietnam war with indiscriminate poisoning using Agent Orange, a defoliant and poison that caused birth defects spina bifida, cleft palate, limb deformities, structural heart disease and hypothyroidism, the murderous Pol Pot regime in the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Cultural Revolution in China with its re-education camps, Biafra, and so many more post-colonial wars, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. and on and on goes the list.

And most recently, the ongoing conflict in Israel.

The catalyst for the devastation being wrought on Gaza and the Palestinian people was a brutal attack on a Kibbutz and Music Festival which saw about 1200 Israelis killed and 240 taken as hostages by the armed militia, Hamas. An unspeakable act of terrorism.

Rarely however is there mention of the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government, the virtual imprisonment of two and a half million people in the most densely populated area in the world, the Gaza Strip, an area of 365 square kilometres. (The Perth Metropolitan area of over 6,300 square kilometres has a similar population.) Nor of the treatment of Palestinians who live on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and the intimidation they are subjected to from settler communities who are building new settlements as the Palestinians are forced or bullied off their lands. Nor the intimidation of multiple security checks, sometimes a matter of a few metres apart, the constant sense of surveillance with soldiers, fully armed in battle fatigues patrolling the streets of positioned on rooftops. The buildup of frustration in both areas have since the Nakbah, or ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 which saw over 700,000 people displaced, and the taking of the West Bank in 1967’s Six day War led to various skirmishes and attacks on Israel people, like the suicide bombers who were active in 1989 and from 2002 to 2005, the First and Second Intifada.

Both attacks, the Hamas attack that was the catalyst for the current conflict and the suicide bombings which targeted Israeli civilians are illegal under international law and are rightly condemned. That said, the frustration of living in such oppressive conditions as in Gaza where all services, water, food, sewerage, electricity are imported from Israel and can be cut off at the drop of a hat, or the frustration of the constant harassment the people on the West Bank and East Jerusalem are subjected to leads to retaliatory actions.

As we get the news flow from Israel and Gaza we are told that it is mainly women and children who are dying. Supplies of food and drinking water are in short supply and apart from people dying because the building they lived in are being blown to smithereens, they are dying of starvation and diseases that come from unsanitary living as over a million people are camping out in a cramped area without sanitation.

Women and children featured in the evidence and defence of the Nuremberg criminals. where the justification for killing children was that they would grow up to be enemies. And women give birth to children.

The Declaration of Human Rights was written as a response to the inhumanity of the Holocaust which saw the killing of 13 million people because of their race, their religion, their ideologies were not acceptable to the Nazi regime in Germany. The races targeted were Jews and Gypsies, two marginalised groups, marginalised not just in Germany, but in much of Europe, and marginalised for centuries, Jews for their religious beliefs, Gypsies were ‘the wandering spirits of the earth’. On ideologies, these included homosexuals and people with disabilities.

Palestinians are marginalised in Israel, but not just in Israel, also in Lebanon, in Jordan, in Egypt where they are placed in Refugee camps, denied employment, treated as second class people and have really nowhere to go.

It seems those who ignore history are likely to repeat it while those who know history can only look on in wondrous amazement.

A group of South Asian men arrived on our doorstep seeking shelter, seeking a place to be made welcome, seeking safety and security. We don’t know why they left their homelands, but they undertook a dangerous journey, finding their way from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India to Indonesia to board small, overcrowded boats and sail across to the northwest of Western Australia.

We don’t know what drove those men to leave their homelands, but to leave is never easy, the decisions usually are to escape one sort of tyranny or another, whether it be religious persecution or some other form of intolerance which is life threatening, racial difference, sexual orientation, or the consequences of natural disasters, but whatever the reason, they now find themselves on Nauru effectively imprisoned for an indeterminate period of time while various checks are made to determine who they are and whether their claim to seek asylum is legitimate, but are promised that they will never be settled in Australia.

They join a multitude of other stateless people, adrift in the uncertainty of having no home to go back to and no place for them to go to. According to the documentary film Human Flow made in 2017 by the Chinese artist and activist Ai WeiWei, about 68million people in search of a home, somewhere, anywhere as they have fled wars, famine, persecution and a life that the only certainty appeared to be death either through starvation or violence or imprisonment for daring to speak out on political differences. According to UNHCR that number has grown to over 110 million in 2023. That is about 1.375% of the world’s population are displaced for any number of reasons. (To make that number seem more real, that is more than 13 people out of every thousand, worldwide.)

Included in that number are internally displaced people who are not defined as refugees but have fled their homelands because of desertification due to climate change, flooding of regions to build dams to gain water security, rising sea levels or other environmental issues which have made the homelands uninhabitable.

These people, seeking somewhere to live are not criminal, they are not illegal, terms which seem to be flung around when defining refugees or asylum seekers, whether they arrive here by plane or boat. Many, according to the Australian Red Cross arrive here with a valid visa, as visitors, and then make claims for asylum. Neither is it illegal to enter a foreign country without visa, passport or other papers when seeking asylum. So the treatment of asylum seekers in Australia, effectively as criminals is not in accordance with the UN Declaration of Human Rights, to which we as a nation are signatories to. Article 14 affords the right to asylum in other countries from persecution.

We have politicised and effectively criminalised those who are some of the most desperate and disadvantaged people in the world and deny them the basic human rights as defined by that declaration which we are obliged to uphold.

And yes, we do have the right, in fact the obligation to confirm that the asylum seeker has a legitimate claim to asylum, and we can restrict their movements during the period of validating that claim. The wording of Article 14 stipulates that the right to seek and enjoy other countries asylum from persecution “may be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” That does acknowledge that not all claims are legitimate and that at times criminals do try to get in ‘through the back door’, but the safeguards are there to ensure that those who are not legitimate refugees can be sanctioned, deported, returned to face justice from the place they have fled.

Listening to the political debate on refugees and asylum seekers, one could be forgiven for thinking that we have a severe problem.

We don’t.

The nations hosting the most refugees are Iran, Turkey, Germany, Pakistan, Uganda, Russian Federation, Poland, Bangladesh, Sudan, Ethiopia, Lebanon… and Australia does not even appear on that listing from stastista.com. Iran according to UNHCR for over 40 years has been host “to the largest and most protracted urban refugees in the world and has provided asylum to refugees for over four decades.” Iran currently hosts over 3.4million refugees and asylum seekers. The small nation of Lebanon, almost half a million refugees, many dating back to the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine/Israel.

Why are we afraid of showing some humanity? Fear of these strange, desperate people drives the political argument, but when I look at our history as a nation, we are an immigrant nation. Starting 236 years ago were undesirables from Britain, prisoners and their guards, followed by wave after wave of settlers and more convicts, after both world wars more immigrants seeking a new life away from wore torn Europe settled here, developing this nation to be at that time an essentially European nation but that changed in the 1970s when we welcomed people from all over the globe. After the Vietnam war we welcomed more boat people, Vietnamese escaping from the re-education camps of the winners of that conflict or the repression of those who had sided with the losing side, and with each successive wave of immigrants we saw new economies flourish, rather than being a burden on this country, these immigrants all have made great contributions to Australia, cultural diversity, new businesses, each wave adding to the economic and cultural development of Australia.

The reality is that each of us who does not claim First Nations status is an immigrant or can trace their ancestry to another country at the most ten generations ago, each of us have either arrived as immigrants, leaving our birth countries, or our parents, grandparents or great grand parents did, for reasons not dissimilar to those who arrive here, whether through the airport carrying a visitor’s visa or through unofficial channels, arriving by boat at great risk to escape whatever the threats and dangers of their homelands.

Diane Armstrong in her book The Voyage of Their Life, records the lives of over five hundred people who arrived in Australia in 1948 on a poorly prepared, dangerously inadequate ship, the SS Derna, and interviewed many of them fifty years later, recording the lives they have created in their new country, many are success stories, business people who have made significant economic contributions, others in the social and political spheres, from people who settled in all parts of Australia, from Western Australia to Far North Queensland, in other words like any other immigrant, arriving, seeking a better life for themselves and the families they formed.

Why do we continue to look to newcomers with such fear, instead of going through the validation of their claims for asylum as refugees and welcoming them so they too can start a new life and contribute as so many have before them.

How sad to see the image of Barnaby Joyce on the pavement, cursing at himself as he talks to his wife on the phone.

Dear Barnaby is not the first politician to find himself in an embarrassing situation after having enjoyed one or two too many drinks, in fact the list is long of politicians who seem not to be in full control while enjoying the company of a few drinking buddies, or perhaps leaning lonely on a bar after every one else has retired for the night. In fact, the list is a long one including Prime Ministers and dating back to the very first Federal Parliament and the first Prime Minister, Edmund Barton.

Adam Brereton wrote in The Guardian of 29 December 2015 of Jamie Briggs who resigned from the Turnbull ministry over “an error of professional judgement” in a Hong Kong bar.

Listed in the article are former Prime Ministers Malcolm Fraser, discovered wearing a towel instead of trousers and missing a very expensive Rolex watch and a wallet with $600 spare change.

Apparently drugged.

And a memorable story about John Gorton who on boarding a VIP jet in Melbourne to take him to Canberra, fell asleep and was woken by the noise of engines and vomited… apparently airsick but the plane was still on the tarmac.

Who can forget the confession Kevin Rudd made of visiting a strip club in New York but being too drunk to remember the details.

And John Barton, and Tony Abbott… the list goes on.

But drunken shenanigans are not restricted to politicians in Canberra when we look at the sad case of Brittany Higgins on a fateful night drifting from pub to club with a work colleague.

The wheels of power it seems need the lubrication of the odd drink now and again, from kids just out of their teens seconded to helpful roles assisting the parliamentarians to the most senior members within the ranks of government and opposition.

Politics can be a brutal game, where the image and trustworthiness of the politicians are grist for the campaign mill, and yet we see that alcohol and the subsequent lapses of demeanour are all too frequently used to undermine the credibility of politicians. Or as with Christian Porter allegedly behaving inappropriately while drinking with young female staffer. The incident had been photographed by another staffer but fortunately Alan Tudge was on hand to delete the photograph from the phone, so the story goes.

Interestingly, despite the allegations, Malcolm Turnbull considered Porter of enough upright character to appoint him as Attorney General a couple of weeks later.

Simmering in the background had been stories of misogyny, alleged rapes and a group of senior male members who proudly proclaimed themselves to be members of the ‘Big Swinging Dick’ club.

The drinking culture within Parliament House was addressed in a review the workplace environment within Parliament House by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins in 2021, and while the review focussed very much on workplace bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault, it was noted that the significance of drinking and a drinking culture were risk factors in the prevalence of the issues addressed in the report.

But alcohol is still available in Parliament House, in the dining room and at very reasonable prices.

It would be difficult to actually ban people who work in Parliament House from drinking, but it surely would be a good idea to limit drinking, ban it completely within Parliament House. Parliamentarians would doubtless say that would be impossible since there are many official functions held which may well include meals with toasts and so forth, so limit the alcohol to those functions but ban alcohol at all other times.

A most noteworthy book on the topic of drunkenness and the inevitable lapses in demeanour is the aptly titled ‘The Psychology of Stupidity’ in which, through various contributors it is pointed out that even the most gifted, talented, intelligent people do stupid things, and to see a drunken politician berating himself while talking on the phone to his wife and admitting that he should not have been drinking because of his prescribed medication is an absolute act of stupidity. The other qualifiers mentioned above, gifted, talented, intelligent, I will leave to the reader’s judgement, but one would be forgiven for thinking that the lessons of previous alcohol fuelled indiscretions appear to have not been well learned, at least by some.

In the Bible book of Exodus, chapter 20 gives the people of Israel the Ten Commandments, the sixth says “Thou shalt not kill” and the eighth says “Thou shalt not steal”.

Through the rise of Christendom in Europe these commandments were well known and became part of the legal structure in all European kingdoms and later nation states.

The Ten Commandments also form the basis of laws in Judaism and Islam.

But to whom do the laws apply? Who is protected by those laws?

It is interesting to place them on a timeline of sorts, starting with the story of Moses meeting with God on Mount Sinai shortly after the Israelites had escaped from slavery in Egypt where God inscribed those laws on rock tablets for the people to learn what God’s will was for them.

40 years later, the next generation of Israelites are near the city of Jericho and a command is given that the city be sacked and all living things in it be killed except for Rahab and her family because she had sheltered the spies sent to case the city. The silver and gold and articles of bronze and iron were placed into the treasury.

Reading this account of the destruction of Jericho and reflecting on the acquisition of the ‘New World’ by the European Colonists from the time of Columbus in 1495 or there about, it seems that the law applied only to those considered to be ‘God’s people’.

Early explorers commented how they were experienced hospitality and kindness from the Indigenous peoples they came across, especially those who had not encountered the explorers previously. There is a story from the early days of settlement in Western Australia where an explorer in need of water had befriended a couple of Aboriginal boys, fed them salted meat and tied them down in the evening, setting them loose in the morning so they could be followed as they sought to quench their thirst. The explorers were greeted in a friendly manner, but the boys were abused to satisfy the explorers’ need for water. They were probably more fearful of the strangers after that encounter.

There is the amazing story by Robert Macklin, Castaway, the story of a French cabin boy who is abandoned in 1858 and is taken in by the local Aboriginal people, adopted and initiated into the tribe, and is eventually ‘rescued’ and returned home to France. The story tells of the protocols of living in tribal territories and the punishments for not following those protocols, the respect afforded to territorial rites and customs. The story is set in the Daintree region of Far North Queensland, and the young man’s ‘rescue’ in 1875 was at the time of the colonial land grab which ignored the Indigenous protocols and wrested the land and spiritual connections from the Aboriginal inhabitants.

Much the same in Australia’s early exploration. When the Batavia ran aground at the Abrolhos islands in 1628 several teenaged boys who were involved in the mutiny on that ill-fated journey were put ashore on the main land, and when 200 years later settlers arrived in the Geraldton region it was noted that the were blue eyed, blonde Aboriginals and a rock painting inland near Mullewa depicted a skeleton of a sailing ship swell as more permanent structures that found elsewhere in region, following a European building style, rock walls and beams used for a roof.

As with most Indigenous peoples, strangers were initially greeted in more or less friendly manners but that changed when bullets were fired from guns or the visitors seems to want to stay, taking land. Ironically, the flag raising ceremony at Sydney cove 236 years ago included a worship service thanking God for the safe passage and asking for His blessing on the newly founded settlement. The land was effectively being stolen and the Aboriginal people who resisted were killed, a pattern which was repeated time and again as the settlement expanded… well maybe not with calls for God’s blessing, but murder and land theft were the principle means of acquiring the land, followed soon after by missionaries to preach the gospel of grace to replace the spiritual connections the Indigenous had with the land, the cycle of life, everything coming from Mother Earth and returning to Mother Earth.

Essentially, Aboriginal people were not considered to be God’s People, and so the laws did not apply, killing those who resisted the theft of their land could be killed.

That is a pattern which was repeated throughout the period of colonisation, Indigenous people were not God’s People and could be taken to be enslaved on the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, or displaced in the quest for farmlands rather than the wasteful hunter gatherer means of sourcing sustenance.

Likewise, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1835 of the condition of the American Indians that “By dispersing their families, by obscuring their traditions, by disrupting their chain of memories… European tyrannies made them more unruly and less civilised than they were before.” (Joe Keohane: The Power of Strangers. P60)

The impact of the loss of identity, the arrogance of colonisers not respecting the cultures of Indigenous peoples, the replacement of cultures through removing people from their lands and placing them in missions to learn about a foreign God and to prepare the people for subservient roles in the invading society. In essence, a ‘lesser minds’ situation, where the Indigenous peoples are considered less than the invader, less to the extent that they may be considered sub-human, dumb, not like ‘us’. Or to take them from their lands in chains to be slaves in the new agricultural industries, whether sold as slaves in faraway places or forced labour on what used to be their land.

We cannot turn the clock back, and I am not suggesting that we should, however when we look at the ‘Closing the Gap’ failures we see that the paternalism of ‘in-group favoritism’ is applied, where lip service is paid to the very obvious needs of the Indigenous population but the money and structures used to deal with them are controlled by politicians and bureaucrats, well-intentioned but essentially self-serving and falling short of respecting the real needs and real cultural imperatives which are denied because they are seen as ‘lesser minds’.

It is interesting to note that the problems addressed in the ‘Closing the Gap’ initiative are similar to most colonised peoples, high rates of imprisonment, drug and alcohol abuse, family violence, lower life expectancy and so on, and are linked very closely to the denial of original cultures, the stripping away of language and the spiritual elements which formed so much of Indigenous way of life, whether Australian First Nations people, North American Indians, Inuit people or any other we could name. Their lands were stolen, dissenters were killed, identity disparaged, people dehumanised and missionaries took over the role of educators and culture replacers which without any sense of irony taught the Ten Commandments as the basis for the new laws of the land.

It seems that not a lot has been learned when we view the ongoing crisis in Palestine/Israel, where since the late 19th Century Zionists have sought to colonise, take back the land promised to Abraham by God in the book of Genesis. Since 1948 the explosion of the Palestinian peoples has been an ongoing activity, culminating in what we currently see, the devastation of Gaza and the perpetual dehumanisation of those living on the West Bank, with the rhetoric from the Israeli Prime Minister quoting Biblical calls to destroy the Amalekites (Exodus 17:8-15) for the annihilation of Palestinians.

It really does seem that the laws, you shall not kill, you shall not steal only apply to those who are ‘God’s People.’

I wish that God would give me an answer to that deep conundrum.

Headlines repeated the line endlessly, the cost-of-living crisis, again, again and again, ad infinitum.

So real action is taken to address the cost-of-living crisis on a number of fronts, but the main measure was to make amendments to the stage 3 tax cuts which were to come into effect on 1 July.

Need we go through it again?

All people who earn money will pay less tax from 1 July 2024.

Easy. Good, fantastic.

Apparently not.

The Australian Industry Group has asked the fair Work Commission to include the effect of the tax cuts when considering the size of the next wage decision.

How grossly unfair that a person struggling to pay rent and buy essentials should not only pay less tax, but should the fair work commission deem that because of the impact on inflation, they should also get a pay increase. HOLY MOLEY!

At the same time those earning around $190,000 per year are still going to pay less tax and get the CPI increases or whatever protection they enjoy in their employment contract, and we are told by the National’s leader, David Littleproud that the tax cuts are nothing less than class warfare.

Try telling someone struggling on the minimum wage that an income of $190.000 a year is not a lot. The minimum wage is $23.23 per hour, $882.80 per week, $45,905.60 a year, less than a quarter of $190,000. According to Mr Littleproud his constituents earning around $180,000 to $190,000 are doing it tough and should get the tax cuts under the original stage 3 legislation. He does fail to point out that they will be getting a slightly reduced tax cut, about four time in dollar terms that of a person on the minimum wage. besides, the lower income earners got tax cuts under stages 1 and 2 of the tax system and should be happy and stop bleating about the rent increases, mortgage increases, price of groceries and the cost of a beer.

Class warfare!

That’s what it is! Nothing but class warfare!

Again we see that politics is being played with empty rhetoric, slogans that imply something good is really something bad.

Sometimes we are proud to be Australian. We cheer on our cricket teams, we carry high hopes for our tennis players, cheer on the Matildas and their home-grown stars.

But what really defines us as a nation?

We are essentially a nation of immigrants, even those who can trace their lineage to the First Fleet, whether as convict or guard, can only claim about ten generations as Australian. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, First Nations people represent 3.8% of the population at 30 June, 2021. The rest, 96.2% are either immigrant or descendants of immigrants coming from over 190 different countries.

With the exception of students arriving after 1950 from Asian and Pacific nations, immigration from the time of Federation until 1973 was ‘white’, essentially European. People deemed to be ‘non-white’ were subjected to a language test and in the first 8 years after Federation only 52 people passed the test from 1359 tests, after 1909 no one passed the tests. Immigrants did arrive from number of European countries, but the ideal immigrant was of Anglo-Celtic origin.

After World War II immigration was open to non-British Europeans as many left war-ravaged Europe to settle in the ‘New World’. That Australia was a large land mass with a very small population that was threatened by Japan during the way, the cry was ‘Populate or perish’ and incentives were introduced to attract immigrants, the ten-pound pom, but the ten-pound price for coming here was offered to many more than just the British.

The Whitlam government passed the Racial Discrimination Act in 1973, ending the White Australia Policy and opening the door to all comers, leading to the diversity of ethnicity we have in 21st Century Australia. Today the proportion of Australia’s population born overseas is 29.5% (ABS).

Leaving a homeland is difficult. To leave behind the family and ethnic connections, even though the homeland may have been war ravaged, leaving is not an easy decision, understanding that there may not be a chance to return. And so, the ties to whatever cultural roots that can be brought to the new land are important, sporting clubs to encourage the playing of sports such as soccer, sorry real football, national clubs, a meeting place for fellow expatriates, churches and so forth, vestiges of home to keep cultures alive, albeit as remembered from the time of leaving.

The idea of a nation implies a common cultural identity, yet Australia, as an immigrant nation is culturally one of the most diverse nations on earth, so perhaps that cultural diversity is what draws us together as a nation, perhaps that we claim our citizenship without needing to shrug off the other bits of our identities makes us uniquely Australian. That by and large we accept difference in our midst, we accept that people are of different origins, dress differently, believe differently, that we have Muslims, Sikhs, Hindu, Buddhist, Judaism and all branches of Christianity living largely in peaceful coexistence is in part what makes us who we are, a largely tolerant community where despite our differences we call ourselves Australian.

And yet we see the elements of fear, the differences which divide, especially when faced with new arrivals who try to come in through the back door so to speak, people who are leaving countries where their lives are threatened for whatever reason, be it leaving war torn Syria where cities have been razed to the ground, or Afghanistan where the Taliban is making life difficult for those who do not comply with the orthodoxy which is strictly enforced, or from Somali where warlords fight for control over a country already in the grips of severe drought, worsening the plight of a starving population, and so it goes, these people are not welcome because they do not arrive through the formal channels, probably because they could not access Australian embassy officials to make formal application requiring proof of identity which is buried somewhere in a bombed out city or burned along with the rest of their belongings.

(We are not alone in not wanting to accept refugees. The film Human Tide by Ai WeiWei documents the plight of refugees vividly. At the time the film was made, 2017, there were almost 70 million refugees searching for somewhere safe to live. The problem has got worse since then.)

This Australia Day, as we pull out the flags and thongs we bought last year, and head out to enjoy the fireworks and homegrown Aussie music, we could probably think about our origins, what brought us here, us or our parents or grandparents, or for some, remembering those who came as convicts, banished from Britain because their forebear stole a rabbit from the King’s forest so he could feed his starving family.

Or for some, who look at the immigrants and see what they have lost, and yet are Australians too, remember that despite the best efforts of the immigrants that culture which dates back over 60,000 years survives still, and makes up another chapter in what it means to be Australian.

In the book Pathogenesis, the author Jonathan Kennedy refers to the phrase ‘Shit Life Syndrome’ being coined by local doctors in Blackpool, one of the poorest areas in the UK. the health conditions they see most frequently are the cause of destitution and hopelessness.

The cause for the destitution and hopelessness cited by Jonathan Kennedy is deindustrialisation where the well-paying jobs in manufacturing and mining have gone and nothing has replaced those employment opportunities manifest in health outcomes which include unhealthy eating and obesity, drug overdoses, alcohol abuse and suicide.

Using just about any means of calculating, Australia is one of the wealthiest nations on earth, having about 138 billionaires and over 2 million millionaires, or about 11.2% of the population, measured in US dollars. and yet we see a rising number of people homeless, we see all the symptoms of a Shit Life Syndrome.

While we here in Australia do not have a Blackpool, we do have a health crisis brought about through destitution and hopelessness. We have areas of deindustrialisation, we have a population who live well below the ‘poverty line’, where it is impossible to scrape together a healthy meal let alone a safe place to sleep. Many in this wealthy country suffer a shit life syndrome, and we do not need to travel far to see it with our own eyes.

There is a small art gallery and local meeting place in a beachside suburb north of Perth where I attend a weekly gathering, and over several months I noticed a Land Cruiser with roof top sleeper parked there, and New Year’s Eve, a number of friends met at the picnic area there to see the sunset, enjoy some tasty snacks and see the new year in when we saw a young couple by that vehicle. We invited them to join us, but they declined, and when asked admitted to being homeless and fearful of the ranger who asks them to move on. Body language and a reluctance to engage were indicators that this couple were not in a good place. This couple is not alone, up and down the coast car parks are occupied most nights with people sleeping in cars, using the beachside amenities for their ablutions but forever fearful of their vulnerability.

Homelessness and the sense of isolation and insecurity is just one manifestation of Shit Life Syndrome. The need to find a sense of feel good somewhere, anywhere leads to drug and alcohol abuse, dare I call it addiction?

Visit the emergency department in any public hospital and there will more often than not be not only security personnel, but also police officers as drug and alcohol fuelled violence threatens the wellbeing of those dedicated to helping the people suffering from their overdoses, facing at times the real prospect of not surviving the crisis they find themselves in. Too many don’t make it, the deaths reported as a result of suicide, drug and alcohol abuse are staggeringly high among adults, with the highest in the latest figures from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre reported for aged 25 to 34 year. the greatest proportion of deaths for people aged 25 to 84 occurred in the most disadvantaged areas, interestingly, deaths for those aged 15 to 24 tended to be from more advantaged areas, possibly indicating a willingness to experiment with drug taking and binge drinking rather than as a dependency to deal with the sense of destitution and hopelessness.

The most common drug of concern is alcohol with drug related ambulance attendance, 59% were for alcohol intoxication. (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.)

Another factor in Shit Life Syndrome is the prevalence of obesity and the various health issues related to inadequate diets. The proportion of overweight or obese adults in Australian 2022 was 65.8%, an increase from 62.8% in 2011-12 with the category defined as obese rising from 27.5% to 31.7%. The rate of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents is about 25%, higher among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, the principle cause is an imbalance between energy consumed through food and drink and activity to burn off that energy. The addictive nature of high sugar and fatty foods and high sugar content drinks combined with a lack of physical activity combine to create a serious health crisis. Those foods and drinks are also the most affordable quick hunger fixes from the local kid friendly fast-food outlet.

Poverty plays a significant role in the Shit Life Syndrome. The frustrations of not having enough for food and clothing let alone accommodation leads to anger and domestic violence, children suffer abuse and neglect as parenting skills are clouded in the haze of a sense of uselessness.

The Shit Life Syndrome is evident all around us but probably most reported on when it deals with aboriginal issues such as in Alice Springs or Broome and occasionally reports about remote communities where the cost of fresh produce is exorbitant, housing inadequate but the problem is so remote that it flies under the radar, seems to go unchecked until there is some kind of trouble, like a young man being shot by a police officer.

But what can be done to ease the crisis of the Shit Life Syndrome?

In remote communities, the cost of providing basic essentials, like fresh produce for the general store can be subsidised, where the freight component of cost is borne by the government. so that a healthy diet is actually affordable, and yes, I have travelled through some remote parts of western Australia and am shocked by the supermarket prices of basic food items, but I am privileged enough to be able to afford them while on holiday but would find it difficult if that were everyday prices.

The continued refusal to increase the Job Seeker allowance to reflect something like addressing the cost of living to provide help and dignity for those who really are the forgotten ones in our communities. Get over the dole bludger mentality, I really don’t believe anyone enjoys being unemployed and poor to the extent that they cannot even afford a decent shirt to go to a job interview let alone the cost of the train or bus fare to get there.

So much of the syndrome is marked by a sense of inadequacy, and with it a seeking of solace or some degree of feel good through substance abuse.

We are a wealthy nation, but too much wealth is concentrated on those who already have more than enough, and we should surely be moving to a more equal society instead of continuing with the stage 3 tax cuts which will increase the gap between the haves and have nots, look to using that tax take to level out the peaks and troughs increasing inequality bring about. That the cost of living crisis we hear so much about is to some extent redressed through a more equitable income tax regime, and pay for the freight to remote communities for food and other essential supplies so that the tyranny of distance is not a barrier to affordable healthy living, to increase the Jobseeker payments so that those recipients too can enjoy a decent meal and have the self-confidence to look and dress appropriately for the job interview so they too can have the dignity of a job. Increase funding for Medicare so that bulk billing is more readily available, so the adequate health care is available even for the most disadvantaged.

Reduce the ability for those with the most to avoid paying taxes, measures like income sharing, tax deductibility for car use and so many other loopholes which exist to minimise paying taxes.

Repeat again and again, we are living in a cost of living crisis.

And the government really urgently right now ought to be doing something about it, right now. What’s wrong with you, Albo!!!!

Isn’t it somehow serendipitous that just as the government announces an enquiry into the pricing policies of the major supermarkets, a loud noise erupts over the un-Australian decision by Woolworths not to sell Chinese made Australia Day merchandise because demand for those products has fallen away?

Suddenly action the government is taking to address the cost of living crisis is drowned out by a concocted scandal.

Add a bit of noise that the price of electricity is way too high, that nothing is being done to get prices down to the levels promised during the last election campaign to completely deny the actions taken by both Federal and State governments to address those costs through rebates and other measures with the media happily headlining the dog whistle, seemingly ignoring what actions have been taken to address that aspect of the (repeat loudly) the COST OF LIVING CRISIS.

Yes, cost of living is a problem for many today, but I am reminded of the biblical statement that the poor will always be with us, and that for many of those suffering in poverty of one kind or another, government action is not going to solve the problem. For them, a cost of living crisis is normal day to day life.

In New Year’s Eve a group of friends and I met at a beach-side picnic spot to watch the sun sink into the ocean and partake of snacks and drinks to see the New Year in. Nearby in the carpark was a Land Cruiser with a roof top camper and a young couple sitting by the vehicle having their evening meal. I visit that site often and have noticed that vehicle there over the past few months, so I went down to invite them to join us to see the New Year in, but the offer was graciously declined. In conversation, the young man said they were homeless and had been living in the car for several months. They were ever aware of the rangers who come by and ask them to move on, but to where? So they say they are there to get an early morning surf in… a couple of boards are beside the vehicle. What was most evident in the brief conversation was that these people were not in a good place and they did not really want to spend time with a bunch of happy old people to see in the New Year. I guess you could call it depression of sorts.

On this morning’s beach walk I met up with James, a man close to my age, and like me, a renter, not a home owner, but also like me admitting that he actually has more than he needs. He volunteers with the Salvos, picking up produce from local supermarkets to distribute to needy families. He usually has some little somethings for kids who happen to come to his car as he is making deliveries, chewing gum, which is received with a broad smile. The mothers receiving the bags of food are most appreciative that small action by James, his partner and the other volunteers solve on a daily basis the cost of living crisis experienced by those most in need.

As James is telling me this, I reflect on the couple of occasions I have witnessed people trying to buy things and falling short… the young lady in a car parts store buying a $40 item to repair her car so she could get to work, but the payment on the credit card failed. Mine worked fine and the young lady’s problem was solved. Or the time at Aldi when a mother is going through the shopping she had done and looking at what was the least necessary items because she could not afford the basketful she needed. Again, small change, less than $100 for me, but it solved her cost of living crisis. Or on the odd occasion I actually have cash that it can help a person who is destitute. When we really think about it, most of us are doing OK. I am a pensioner, but have more than I need; it costs so little to do a good deed which means so much to those who are genuinely struggling. And by taking personal action we tend not to repeat loudly that there is a cost of living crisis.

I tire of those who repeat that line time and again, cost of living crisis, cost of living crisis from their well paid jobs in the media, if on the TV dressed fashionably, expensively. or the politician who as a backbencher takes home of $250,000 a year, frontbenchers a whole heap more, and that is without considering the electorate allowances and travel perks they enjoy. The cost of living crisis for them is just another term to hit the government with while they sit on their hands dreaming up the next populist slogan to deflect from good things the government may do.

And yes, I do concede that costs have risen. My own rent has gone up considerably, so yes, I understand that it has become more expensive for me to live but can still afford to go on my trips to places I want to visit, still active and well enough to look at Bluff Knoll and decide that it needs me to sit at the top again as I make may way to Bremer Bay to see the pod of orcas that visit near there. I can still plan a trip to drive around Tasmania; a bucket list dream. So, despite the cost of living crisis, I can live a life of comfort and adventure.

I live a life of gratitude, and as such when I see a need I am privileged enough to be able to help at a personal level. I expect that those in power do the same, but at a level which they have signed up for, not to be a loud destructive voice in opposition but to scrutinise the actions of government and make amendments and suggestions to improve what is being done instead of the political point scoring through populist sloganeering.

And while we are on rent and rent increases, how many politicians have rental properties and are enjoying the increased return through the rent increases which have exploded in the past year? There appears to be no cost of living crisis for those… and they are on both sides of the aisle.

Empty slogans from people who have more than they need, from people who live in a comfort that would be the envy of most loudly repeating cost of living crisis as their bank accounts and superannuation accounts grow day by day. To refresh memories, when the super contribution was 9.5%, federal politicians and their staff were being paid 15.4% and the vote to increase the rate for the ordinary punter, the yous and mes of the world, there was a reluctance to vote for the increase.

Orthodox: Following or conforming to the traditional or generally accepted rules or beliefs of a religion, philosophy or practice. (Oxford Dictionary)

Humanity:1. Human beings collectively. 2. The quality of being humane. (Oxford Dictionary)

Reasoned discussion is interesting, engaging, respectful and often enlightening. To consider a situation, event, philosophic stance from different points of view canvassing the intricacies and nuances of an argument, to explore differences and possibly agreeing to disagree while retaining respect for those whose views are disagreed with becomes difficult when the rule of orthodoxy is applied. Throughout history the defence of orthodoxy has caused rivers of blood to flow. To dare to differ from the strict rules enforced by a ruling group, whether it be a religious body or some other authoritative body can become a bloody, lethal affair. To dare to challenge the dictates of those in power is dangerous. Even today, in an ostensibly democratic environment, orthodoxy rules, debates are reduced to simplistic thought numbing platitudes which mobilises fear and division toward those who seem to threaten the orthodoxy.

The history of Christian churches in Europe is marked with repeated violence in efforts to retain its orthodoxy, its doctrinal purity as dictated by the church hierarchy, from Rome.

One challenge to orthodoxy which had a profound impact was the nailing of his 95 theses to a chapel door by Martin Luther, questioning among other things, the sale of indulgences, whereby a wealthy person could buy his way to salvation, a blatant fundraiser for a church which was more concerned about building great cathedrals than caring for the most needy. The action of so publicly questioning the orthodoxy, the way in which the church operated if you will, started the Reformation, where the new denominations were formed, first the Lutheran Church, later in Geneva Jean Calvin formed what became the Reformed Church and so the church splintered into independent denominations which led to the Thirty Year War where religious deviance was attacked with the full force of military actions.

Schisms in the churches and the resulting persecutions led the Puritans to charter the Mayflower and settle in New England, in what is now the USA, the Amish from the lowlands of the Netherlands to settle in Pennsylvania, the Huguenots from France and Belgium to settle in South Africa, the escapes from persecution to settle in newly found lands where there was the freedom to live and worship as each sect determined was their interpretation of the Biblically mandated way to live and worship, each in their own ways forming a new orthodoxy which led to their own means of persecution such as the Salem Witch Trials which resulted in the public hanging of thirty people deemed to be guilty of being witches.

Religious orthodoxy and the conflict between orthodoxies stem from differing interpretations of teachings, among the Christian churches, the interpretation of the New Testament texts, but a more profound conflict is between the Old and New Testaments.

In the Old Testament, the sign of being of God’s People was marked for the males through circumcision which was conducted on the eighth day after the child’s birth, a mark he would carry for life and committed him to the written law as handed to the Israelites by God, through Moses after the escape from slavery in Egypt as chronicled in the book of Exodus. Additionally, the over-arching laws of the Ten Commandments were directed into minor laws in the book of Leviticus, and taught through the worship services and sacrifices called for through those laws. The Exodus was seen as confirmation of the promise God made to the patriarch of the Israelites, Abraham, that his offspring were God’s chosen people and the land of Israel was the land God promised to Abraham’s descendants through time immemorial.

The New Testament sign of God’s grace is through baptism, a washing away of sins with water. Baptism is a sign that the person being baptised is reconciled with God but that sign is invisible. In other words, the person is one of God’s people, saved through the grace extended by Jesus Christ carrying the punishment of his or her sin.

Two orthodoxies in conflict for over two thousand years is the basis for the persecution of Jews throughout the ages.

Baptisms were recorded by the church, confirming the birth of a person, confirming that they legally exist, but the church did not record the birth of those who were not baptised, Jews, who were circumcised, or Gypsies who practiced Believer’s Baptism, a baptism of a person old enough, mature enough to understand the teachings of God’s Grace extended through the death and resurrection of Christ.

Both groups were alienated, were barred from owning land and the wealth that enabled or any other benefits accorded subjects of the realm within which they lived.

Through the learning of the written laws they lived by, Jews were highly literate, and using those skills developed business skills, marketing and money skills which were at times welcomed when a region was struggling but spurned when things became good again, through the leadership of Jewish management.

Gypsies were not as literate and became more a travelling group, performing menial tasks, itinerant workers who were often preyed on for their labour of despised when they ask for a fair return.

Religious orthodoxy has been a cruel means of control and alienation throughout history, but other orthodoxies have been as alienating and bloody. Political orthodoxy is one such example and the control the Communist Party had in the USSR and still has in China serve as examples, but the sometimes insidious nature of politics that can be a divisive in democracies as political parties and their leaders position themselves using fear and bribery as means of attaining and maintaining power. This was so clearly demonstrated in the campaign held leading to the referendum on the Voice last year. Orthodoxy is inherently conservative and the campaign to not change the constitution was marked most poignantly through the empty slogan “If you don’t know, Vote No”.

The ‘debate’ from the conservative side of politics was filled with misinformation, essentially dumbing down any arguments to empty sloganeering and a refusal to listen.

In much the same way, the holders of the keys to orthodoxy in other places run to the same rule book, empty slogans and fear, the rise of the Party for Freedom in The Netherlands which campaigned on fear of difference, fear of racial difference, fear of religious difference. The Tories in Britain campaigned for Brexit, fear of foreigners, fear of loosing their Britishness, Trump in the USA, Make American Great Again, and fear of immigrants, fear of difference. Empty slogans, generalisations to describe whole populations as rapists and murderers or any other epitaph to engender fear.

The enforcement of orthodoxy has dreadful outcomes for those specifically targeted, the most recent can be witnessed in both Afghanistan and Iran, where fundamentalist regimes have power and enforce their rule of Sharia Law on their populations. The forced growing of beards for men and complete covering of women, denying girls education in Afghanistan, and a recent example in Iran of a protester who was executed by hanging on a crane placed at the main intersection of a town, his crime, waging war against God, essentially campaigning for freedoms which are being denied, in this case, the rule that women must have their heads covered.

And then there is Israel, where the Orthodox Religious Zionists are the most powerful political group, although a minority, they hold politically privileged positions. The rise of Zionism in the late 19th century and the beginning of immigration to Eretz Yisrael, coming home as it were to the land God promised to Abraham in Genesis, if the timeline is correct some 4000 years ago, to retake the land at first little bit by little bit but since 1948 laying claim to it exclusively for God’s Chosen Ones. Using the communication tools of orthodoxy, to dumb down the argument, refuse to recognise that the people who have lived there for as long as time can be recorded are not defined as a people, but as terrorists, empty slogans which are never explained to denigrate and dehumanise. That was reminiscent of when Nazis tattooed a number of their prisoners, their names were obliterated, they were dehumanised, made a number.

An important question which deserves an answer is which takes precedence, Orthodoxy or humanity? A brief run through history it appears unfortunately that orthodoxy takes precedence.