By Bert Hetebry

We are the mongrels

Underneath the table,

Fighting for the leavings

Tearing us to shreds.

We are the mongrels

Underneath the table

Tearing up the floorboards

Unaware of the banquet

Up above our heads.

The chorus to a 2014 song by Joan Osborne, it is an ear worm, rattling through my brain as I consider the inequalities which appear to increase day by day.

It also reminds me of how lucky we as baby boomers and our children were to be born when we were.

Post war reconstruction and the economic boom which followed was, at least for the west, the most prosperous time, with the prosperity spread through the class system, such as it was.

Here in Australia, we had immigrants arriving from war torn Europe, as was the case in South Africa, New Zealand, Canada and the USA, the explosion of urban and suburban development, jobs galore in construction and manufacturing, all well paid and housing was affordable, cheap, as a proportion to income.

In Europe and Japan too, the reconstruction of destroyed infrastructure and the rebuilding of industrial bases saw the economies rebuilt, high wages and low unemployment. A literal explosion of consumer goods, motor vehicles. white goods, the invention of ‘teenagers’ to open up new markets for fast foods, fashion and entertainment.

Ordinary working-class people had never had it so good. Demand for skills both in restructured industries as well as management were in demand, so trade and tertiary education was freed up, made available so for the first time many were able to afford the education needed for well paid jobs and careers.

Just for a while, the doctrine of the owners of capital was laid aside, for a short while the ‘All for ourselves and nothing for the people’ doctrine as defined by Adam Smith was seemingly forgotten.

But then, the opening verse to the song:

Whatever happened to this

it was an island of bliss

in this ridiculous place.

But now the river runs black

and I don’t know the way back

I feel it going to waste.

We can trace the growing inequality back to the time Adam Smith’s words became doctrine again, the time of Thatcher and Reagan, trickle down economy became the order of the day, if the rich could be rewarded for being rich by becoming richer, a few pennies may just trickle down the growing mountain of wealth, lodge underneath the table for the mongrels to fight over.

We have seen small and medium sized family-owned businesses which grew during that post war period become larger and often sold to investors, fund managers or large conglomerates. Food production, there were bakeries making home deliveries daily, the smell of fresh bread being baked wafting through the morning air, but no more, now the bread is baked in massive factories ownership in the hands multinational corporations. Even the fancy breads from the shopping mall bakers are franchised, the principles being major corporations. Agricultural and grazing lands are being bought up by investment groups and billionaire investors as family ownership diminishes so much so that food production and processing are confined to fewer and fewer corporations. The multi billionaires never have enough, there is always another something they need, the power to own the means of production, to restrict competition, to maximise profits.

A good Australian example is Bunnings, now the largest hardware and nursery retailer in Australia. Gone are the mum and dad owned local hardware and garden centres, closing because they cannot compete. In the last twelve years, two such hardware stores and several small garden centres near where I live have closed. And that is repeated all around Australia.

Or the supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths pretty much own the market, smaller, independent stores are closing because they cannot compete.

The result of that power imbalance ripples through the economy as the purchasing power of the largest stores squeeze manufacturers and suppliers to the edge of profitability, again, often family-owned companies, market gardeners, dairy farmers are forced out of their industries because they cannot afford to keep going.

The impact on local manufacturing is such that companies making hand and power tools have closed their factories, becoming importers of foreign made, usually Chinese products. So the post war jobs market has changed, manufacturing is reduced to a few specialist brands but mainly those jobs have gone. Skills are lost. Trades people are encouraged to work FIFO, fly in fly out to earn a decent income, trades people in the building industry are encouraged (forced) to be self-employed sub-contractors to large building companies, without the safety net of wages, but carrying the risk of the building company going broke, leaving the sub-contractor out of the income expected for doing the work they were contracted to do. (How many building companies have gone since Covid? It seems for a while it was a weekly event for one or two to go ‘belly up’.)

In the 1890s the American philanthropist, John D Rockefeller asked that educators provide him with ‘workers, not thinkers’, people skilled up just enough to fill repetitive, production work. Leave the thinking to those who were the owners of the business, or the chosen few educated for more senior and developmental roles. To that end, Rockefeller built research universities, special research facilities to support his own interests, both business and personal interests, but exclusive institutions for an elite body of academics.

We see much the same today where the philanthropic endeavours of the wealthiest are to support their own interests, using their largess to support and build to satisfy their needs, such as sporting teams, development of public spaces that are dear to their hearts, but avoiding the pay otherwise tax liability of those earnings, so that the money can be used to satisfy the needs of the larger population.

The former American Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan spoke of a greater employment market insecurity, in railing against a unionised workforce so that employees do not ask for higher wages but accept lower living standards in exchange for keeping their jobs. We witnessed much the same during the nine years of wage stagnation while we had the LNP governments of Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison.

With the fear that people may actually be able to afford to buy stuff, the last Reserve Bank Chairman recently suggested that there needs to be an increase of GST. The GST affects lower income earners to a greater extent since they spend most of their income on living expenses, buying stuff just to survive. So those with the least power are asked to contribute more to the tax take than those who can skirt around their tax liabilities.

So how is this inequality playing out?

The baby boomers and their children are the main owners of the housing stock. Both for personal living and rental stock. They are, mostly, doing OK. New 4wd truck to tow the caravan in the drive (too big to fit into the garage) and money in the bank for the next overseas adventure.

The price of home building has exploded, material costs have grown and builders who wrote fixed price contracts, as they had done for years are suddenly collapsing, unable to pay bills, unable to complete the homes they have contracted, leaving many of their trades people, sub-contractors out of pocket. Rents have gone up so that those who traditionally would be entering the housing market are unable to save for the required deposit to qualify for a home loan, rising interest rates have made getting a mortgage even more difficult as the cost of repaying becomes impossible on an average household income. Those with mortgages, especially relatively new mortgages have been hit with repayments that are hard to make, squeezing family budgets so that even the morning coffee from the local cafe is an unaffordable luxury.

Homelessness is on the rise as rent increases stretch budgets beyond breaking point and evictions are forced. Frustrations lead to family violence, drug and alcohol addictions.

Entrenched and inherited wealth and privilege ensure that the inquiry divide grows. Education leading to university and careers in finance, law and other top end of town positions are expensive and those from the right families with the right connections get to have first choice of the available seats at the table. Aspirants who have to pay their way through the years of study are burdened with HECS debts which are indexed and never seem to go away, but seem to grow year on year, causing a disincentive for would be students to follow their dreams.

Let’s finish with Joan Osborne:

This is a chance for the prize

it’s waiting here in my eyes

you hardly look at me now.

With every beat of my heart

I want to make a new start but I don’t seem to know how.

 

We are the mongrels

underneath the table

fighting for the leavings

tearing us to shreds

We are the mongrels

rolling on the floorboards

unaware of the banquet

up above our heads.

By Bert Hetebry

“You’re not worth going to jail for.”

Let’s call him John. I met John walking on the beach several months ago. He is an angry 60 something guy, divorced and about as anti-woman as any one I have met. He divorced a long time ago, he told me he wanted to kill his ex, he choked her but released the choke, telling her that she was not worth going to jail for.

He told me that several times over the times we have said the ‘G’day, how’s it going?’ greeting.

John’s anger is deep seated, his sense of entitlement is paramount. More importantly, his ex is lucky to be alive.

His sense of entitlement is anti-authoritarian. He does not like others, especially women, having authority over him, a female council ranger threatened him with a $100 fine for walking his dog on a beach which was not the dog beach. It was a friendly warning. He was not fined but would be the next time, so he has a quick look around to make sure the ranger is not about as he proceeds to the people’s beach with his dog. Public safety is the issue there, nothing about hating dogs but more about allowing people who don’t much want to spend time fending off dogs while at the beach have a safe place to be. (One of my granddaughters was attacked by a dog, she had 12 stitches on her face and is still traumatised by the event, several years later.)

I think we have a man problem, and it is not just here in Perth, not just here in Australia, it is a worldwide problem.

Argentine’s recently elected president, Javier Milei is about to shut down a ‘anti-gender violence agency’ despite increased violence against women according to an article in the Guardian today (8 June 2024).

In the same edition of the Guardian, a feature article entitled ‘Power, patriarchy, victimhood, denial’, cites three experts on why men harm women.

Yesterday evening’s ABC news bulletin carried a story where three women were interviewed on the topic of Domestic Violence, each impacted by the death of a woman close to them, a sister, daughter, friend, murdered by their estranged partners.

We see political leaders try to address the issue, the State Premier looking at gun control, the most recent event here in Perth saw two women murdered, shot by a man looking for his wife and daughter, couldn’t find them so shot their friends and then turned the gun on himself. The man was a licensed gun owner, owning a small arsenal of firearms.

The Prime Minister is on TV stating the obvious; something must be done.

Browsing in a local bookshop last week I stumbled upon an intriguing title, The Ten Types of Human by Dexter Dias. It’s a fat book, but the title grabbed me and my credit card leapt from my wallet. Dexter Dias QC, according to the introductory notes, is a human rights barrister, part-time Crown Court judge and a visiting researcher at Cambridge and Harvard. And he has me absolutely captivated. The stories he relates as he examines each of the ten types of human are amazing, confronting, distressing.

One of the ten types is ‘The Beholder’, people, men, who are entranced by the beauty of a woman and desire them, stalk them, harass them and when rejected have destroyed the beauty they could not attain, acid attack to the face, scarring the women for life. The two incidents written about are from India and Kenya.

Lots of words are spoken, many tears are shed, but the most I get out of it all is a sense of impotence.

Obviously, something needs to be done to stop this insanity. That is acknowledged each time someone is asked… Prime Minister, State Premiers, Police Commissioners, they have all have faced cameras, issued press releases, tried to be empathetic but the problem looms larger than ever it seems.

I’m a man, and the problem lies with men, men like me, men like John, men like Anton who is a neighbour, men like my sons and sons in law. It lies with each of us who enter relationships, that we value those relationships, that we listen to the women in our lives, that we shed the sense of entitlement. (I have a throwaway line when people call me ‘sir’. I am neither titled nor entitled.)

Not only am I a man, but I am also a divorced man, and needed to work through the issues divorce, rejection, and estrangement bring about. The sense of lostness, loneliness, aloneness. The anger that rises, the sense of worthlessness. The readjustment to starting a new life. But the scariest is the rising anger. The ‘how dare she do that’, the fear of looking deeply into myself to understand how this happened and that it was in large matter, my fault. To come to a place where I can love myself again, to have a sense of self-worth.

And to deal with ME, the issues I face, the ones I can control.

The rebuilding of a life.

I mention myself here, because for every man who faces rejection, divorce, relationship breakdown, there needs to be a deep look at themselves. It is too easy, as John does, to place the blame on the woman. For John it has meant that the only relationship he seems to have is with his dog. He fears women, he fears any deep relationship where there is any sense of accountability, even in our beach chats, there is his anger, his misogyny, his unwillingness to examine himself.

For others there is the comfort in drugs and alcohol, the papering over of the hurt for it to break through again when sobriety awakens with a hangover, or the body shakes in need of another fix.

I don’t know the answers, but the man problem needs to be addressed. The issues in part are social media where we can get trapped in hateful discussions, where violent rhetoric is the order of the day, anger rules, rail against women, rail against perceived injustices, rail, rail, rail, but don’t take the time to look to closely at the real problem, ME.

Constant questions of money allocation within government handouts, constant pressures placed by questions which address the impotency of the responses as the death toll rises.

It’s a man problem, and when we see men isolate themselves, refusing to connect with available counselling, refusing to rise beyond their ‘oh woe is me’ depressions, allowing them to blame other, the problem will not go away.

Possible solutions lie in men’s groups, and when we look at the issue in, say, the Indigenous groups where domestic violence seems to be an intractable problem, perhaps getting out with a group of guys and kick a football around, no alcohol, just play a bit of kick to kick, run around, sit down for a rest and talk. Connect in a healing environment.

Or in the fly in fly out work environment that counselling is on offer, that networks are made available during the time at home as well as on the work sites.

But most of all that the sense of male entitlement is addressed. That women are equal partners in relationships, not chattels, not servants, not inferiors. Cultural barriers need to be addressed, those issues such as the Biblical positions such as in Ephesians 5, “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

Too often that becomes the standout instruction, but neglected are other references to marriage relationships, starting in the very first book, Genesis 21, “Listen to your wives”, and in the New Testament too, in 1 Peter 3, “Husbands must give honour to your wives. Treat your wife with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner on God’s gift of new life.” But even in those, the husband’s role is as the head, as the leader, as the authority.

I was raised in a churched family and attended church well into my fifties. I cannot recall sermons on the last two quotes but recall many on the call to wives’ submissiveness. The sense of entitlement, of male superiority is deeply embedded in religious teaching and dogma. It is also deeply embedded in traditional societies where many of our immigrants come from. It is expressed in the cultural influences we have, film, entertainment, the internet, politics.

The apparent breakdown of community and communal influence is also part of the problem. The way we live without the connections of the village community of the past, where neighbour really did look out for each other, means that relationship problems remain behind closed doors, there are no safe places to go to. And as witnessed recently in a bun fight in the City of Perth closing down a women’s shelter, trying to push the responsibility onto another branch of government, the problem is shoved aside, put in the too hard basket as budgetary constraints and political ambition stand in the way of trying to solve the problem. The mayor is a bit of an Alpha Male, shock jock radio personality now endorsed Liberal candidate for the next election. (Liberals have a woman problem? Or could it be a man problem?)

By Bert Hetebry

I read an interesting book recently, The Power of Strangers by Joe Keohane. Subtitle is The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World.

I talk to strangers, and very quickly discover they are not really strange at all, in fact, many are a lot like me; living a life and willing to talk about it, even with strangers. In one such encounter I mentioned to a woman that I am in a local ukulele choir which meets every Monday evening. She was new to our area, plays a ukulele and is now a member of our choir… and she is far more accomplished at playing and singing than I am.

(Bugger, that’s the last time I mention that!)

Most mornings I ride about 3km to a beach and walk for an hour or so, but with winter setting in and the beach sand having been taken away to be cleaned for the summer, there was not much beach to walk on, so wandering where I could I passed by a young lady who smiled up at me, and we began to chat. Her accent was pretty broad, she was visiting from Belfast, Ireland. She is here with her family, a British soldier and their young son.

Her family is Catholic and it did not go down well that she married a British soldier but she is again a welcome visitor at home. (It’s amazing how forgiving a grandparent can be when they meet their newest grandchild.) I asked her about the troubles and how that affects life in Northern Ireland today. The polarisation is still there, but then she made an interesting comment, the two sides of that social/religious divide have chosen sides in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The Catholics are for the Palestinians. Protestants for the Israelis and the flags are flying all across Belfast.

I got the feeling that the division in Northern Ireland is still quietly simmering beneath the surface, some social changes are slowly happening, abortion is now legal. It was not long ago that a pregnant woman would take an overnight ferry to England and arrive back the following morning, soon enough to avoid any suspicions of what may have been the reason for an absence… mmm, in the club eh? Gay marriage is legal but frowned on in the churches. Civic ceremonies only.

The conversation regarding the Gaza situation was so much different than one I had on line with a person who likes to push my buttons. He posted, ‘I don’t understand why the Palestinians do that’.

‘What?’

‘October 7’.

We had covered that ground before; he keeps posting YouTube videos of angry Jews berating the stupidity of the Palestinians, how they want to take over Israel, God promised it to Abraham and his descendants in Bible, the book of Genesis (same book where we get the creation story and Noah’s flood), and we are his descendants and so forth. The stories are always so strongly defensive of their right to the land and that Palestinians should just disappear. His posts are filled with hate. There is a denial of Palestinian human rights. Interestingly, he also voted NO, a very definitive NO, in The Voice referendum, probably for the same reason, they should fit in or disappear.

So he calls me Muslim, cites passages from the Koran such as ‘everyone is born Muslim’ (apparently that is in the Koran, he cites a text reference), but I have tried to remain polite, putting up with soft name calling, me being Muslim for example, being ignorant, being woke. So I address him by his name as I offer a defence, no, explain my stance on humanitarian grounds, citing the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict over time, since 1948, the UN plan to have displaced European Jews settle in Palestine, a nation blending two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, but that the Palestinians have been pushed aside, endured the Nakba, live in virtual imprisonment in Gaza. All is like water of a duck’s back, quite irrelevant. October 7, October 7, October 7. Rapes, beheaded babies, and so forth… Yes, I forwarded an Aljazeera documentary which exposed those lies, but you can’t trust them to tell the truth, can you!

The ‘debate’ becomes ugly despite my efforts at decorum. And is reflective of the debate and protests we see, not just here, as displayed in Parliament today, but all around the world. The weaponising of antisemitism, the power plays by various lobbyists that almost amount to blackmail, the hate speech. The disregarding of the very potent images of the destruction of Gaza to a pile of rubble, the destruction of hospitals, the killing of reporters within Gaza, stifling the access to reporting, the ever so slow delivery of aid, food, water, fuel, medical supplies, but that is not genocide, is it? And oh dear, the ‘mistake’ of blowing up those tents which had just been moved to a safe zone killing 50 or so women and children.

And then today, changing the topic, the questioning of Dr Anthony Fauci in the US Congress, belittling him for the work he did during Covid, to be berated, insulted, told he was not worthy of the title ‘Doctor’, accused of taking kickbacks (OK, no real accusation, but questioned about how much he got paid by the pharmaceutical companies. Answer, nothing, $0.00). One member of Congress was a doctor at the time, working in a hospital and accused Dr Fauci of making life difficult for unvaccinated people and doctors such as him working, saving lives in hospital wards. The headline WATCH: Brilliant Doctor CONFRONT Fauci on ”Making life difficult for unvaccinated”.

My posting Dr Fauci’s record as a research doctor in developing vaccines and medicines to treat HIV/AIDS among other diseases was poohoo’d as being far less important than a doctor working in a hospital saving lives. Mmmmmm, and then to be called a liar for daring to mention that at the time the internet was full of QAnon conspiracies regarding mask wearing and vaccinations.

That I got involved in that ‘discussion’ was probably a big mistake, but it highlights the hate which is so much a part of online discussion, the lack of ‘listening’, of reasoned debate being ignored or dismissed, of headline type arguments followed by insults if you dare to disagree. And another YouTube video of someone angrily spouting more bullshit.

Unfortunately, the same is evident what should be more civilised debate. The political point scoring in Parliament yesterday regarding the protests and vandalism outside electoral offices, where the Prime Minister said it should stop, and that descended into the Leader of the Opposition accusing the Greens of orchestrating that… that may not be the exact words, but that was the implication.

Politics here has become hate-filled, debates reduced to headline grabbing one liners, where detail is given, the call for detail as in the announcement to encourage permanent residents to join our military as a pathway to citizenship, outlining both a timetable and who will be encouraged to join up, in other words, don’t listen, more detail, don’t listen, more detail.

Hate and division.

How sad a place the world has become.

Except when we take the time to meet a stranger and just chat about life, listen to their story, tell your story, engage and above all… take the time to LISTEN.

Have a real conversation.

It has been noted by some of the more astute media observers that Rupert Murdoch attended his fifth wedding wearing a conventional lounge suit and ‘sneakers’. Has Rupert gone punk asked one observer who suggested that this attire was more in line with the rebellious streak one would expect from Keith Richards or perhaps Sir Rod Stewart who have been known to challenge conventional dress standards from time to time. Perhaps Rupert is setting a new fashion style for the ninety-year-old celebrity man-about-town or maybe he thought he was going for a jog or an outing to the beach : who knows ?

To the casual observer it may seem that Rupert’s upmarket plimsolls may have just been for comfort and balance which instantly brings Joe Biden to mind as he is also known to sport [orthopaedic] sneakers on odd occasions when you would expect a pair of polished Oxfords as more appropriate to set off his besuited ensemble.

It has also been noted that Joe is frequently seen to be surrounded by stocky people these days when he is out and about : some say that this is possibly a take from Weekend at Bernie’s but that could be a tad unfair – more likely these solid folk surrounding POTUS are there to step in with a helping hand when he stumbles periodically or to nudge him back onto the straight and narrow should he stray.

But let’s be honest, us old codgers are generally more comfortable in a pair of favoured slippers or our comfortable sneakers and when you are on your fifth marriage, as the old coffin dodger is, I suppose it’s not such a big deal and his bride, in her sixties, should she wish to be carried over the threshold of their love nest will require her stud to demonstrate stamina and a sound footing.

Each to their own !

By Bert Hetebry

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.

By Maria Millers

Over the last decade, we have seen social media grow rapidly in use and importance. Marketing and advertising has shifted away from its traditional home of TV and newspapers to social media and a new profession that of the influencer has emerged: a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending it on social media.

It first began with celebrities such as film stars endorsing products but has shifted to social media using people who have built a large following. And increasingly they are children and predominantly young girls.

Last week’s ABC Four Corners program was uncomfortable watching. To see young children, or kidfluencers as they are called, used as pawns in promoting products with questionable outcomes for the child’s future wellbeing. In his poem, The Rainbow, Romantic Poet William Wordsworth reminds us that early experiences and emotions shape who we become as adults when he wrote the much-quoted line, The Child is father of the Man.

There was a feeling of exploitation of childhood, that the young people featured were being robbed of their innocence and that this was made possible by the complicity of parents, well-meaning or otherwise. Were the parents living unrealised dreams vicariously through their children? Were the children used to bolster family income?

In our culture we view childhood as a hallowed period of innocence, but it was not always so and the concept of childhood is only a recent invention which for generations did not exist, and children were not afforded special care. Since Christianity believed that everyone was born with original sin, until the 17th century children were not regarded as innocent, but as fallen angels. This is why many of the largest denominations who believe in original sin practice infant baptism.

In fact, going back in history to pre-Enlightenment times and depending on your social ranking, children were more likely to be over-worked, terrorized, abandoned and sexually abused. And since seven out of ten children didn’t survive to adulthood, inhumane as it may sound, parents did not invest sentimentally in a relationship with their children. Even privileged children were left in the care of others.

Even though a new view of human nature and children has evolved since the Enlightenment, even as late as the Victorian era children were still neglected and abused; working in appalling conditions in factories and mines. Think of all the neglected, poverty stricken and abused children in Dickens’ novels, and in poetry as well. In The Chimney Sweeper William Blake writes:

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue

Could scarcely cry ” ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!”

So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

Today we regard childhood as a distinct and important period in human development, but that is not to say that for many millions of children life is far from picture perfect.

Today as we shop for what has become known as fast fashion, slave child labour is present in almost every step of the supply chain: from the harvesting of cotton balls to repetitive tasks like beading, trimming etc. carried out in fetid sweat shops. The cheap prices we pay come at a human cost to the future of these invisible children.

But what was troubling in the Four Corners program was that we were seeing very young children who were even not legally allowed to have an online account or a job, become fully immersed in promoting products and themselves. The extent and intensity of these kidfluencers raises concerns about potential harmful impacts on the future physical and emotional health of these children.

And because there appears to be more young girls than boys the disturbing unintended consequence of promoting themselves is that many encounter a dark underworld of the internet dominated by men, including paedophiles.

There was even a frank admission by the mother of Ava – one of the featured girls – when queried about possible dangers of such exposure she freely admitted that Ava was not allowed to go out to the shops or travel on public transport on her own!

The program left you with a feeling of child exploitation, indeed perhaps even abuse. And all done with parental consent. In fact, a high level of parental involvement

But what about informed consent on the part of the child?

The lure, of course, is predominantly money, and parents always say the money is being held for the child’s future needs, such as laying down the foundations for a career or creating a healthy bank balance for future security. And the financial rewards can be staggering. Toy reviewer Ryan Kanji’s family is reputed to earn US$25 million a year

But who audits this? And who monitors the physical and mental welfare of these children?

There has of course always been anxiety associated with new technologies from the printing press to radio and TV and now computers, often seen as undermining the cultural landscape and encouraging vice and unnatural behaviour. However, it’s undeniable that the internet is central in our lives, from education to socializing to daily transactions such as paying bills and ordering groceries, and is increasingly regarded by some as a human right.

Before social media, those seeking the limelight might have got an agent and pursued acting or modelling, but now influencing is a way to cut out the middleman and reach audiences directly.

Governments all over the world are increasingly recognizing the growing need to protect children online. In Australia the Online Safety Act 2021aims at countering online bullying, image-based abuse and harmful content, but the Act does not focus on specific risks for children’s online participation in influencer activities.

So far, the French government appears to be the only one that has taken tangible action to regulate the labour of child social media influencers. Under French law, children below age 16 can only work limited hours, and their earnings must be safeguarded in an account made accessible when they turn 16.

In the US, the Coogan Act (named after child star Jackie Coogan) was signed into law in 1939 to regulate child labour in the entertainment industry, but no equivalent laws have been enacted for child social media stars.

We like to believe that parents always act in the best interests of their children but what we are witnessing with kidfluencers on social media is that this may not always be true. Children need more protection from not only the dark side of the internet but also sometimes from the actions of those who should be safeguarding their physical and emotional wellbeing. The challenge to lawmakers is how to control abuse and exploitation when the new workplace may be the family kitchen.

From the 4 Corners program we can see that this should be an urgent priority to avoid a generation of damaged young people. Surely we have evolved from those past eras when children had no rights and protections to one where we owe our future generation a duty of care to become physically and emotionally well-balanced adults and citizens.

This be the Verse

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.” (Philip Larkin, High Windows)

This article was originally published on the Ferntree Gully Star Mail.

By Bert Hetebry

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.

By Bert Hetebry

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.

By Bert Hetebry

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.)

By Bert Hetebry

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.

By Bert Hetebry

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.

By Bert Hetebry

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.

By Bert Hetebry

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.

By Frances Goold

He asked if we had anything planned for Anzac Day.

“A big rest” was all I could come up with. “What about you?”

“We’ll go to the Dawn Service.”

“Kids too?”

“The kids have been coming with us to the Dawn Service since they were babies. Later there’s a few of us will head off to the two-up game. The ring’s sandbagged, there’s refreshments, it’s a big tradition here.”

We’d been hanging pictures when I noticed the tat on his arm. It didn’t seem like the usual macho array so I asked if he would show it to me.

He nodded, “Sure”, raised his sleeve, and turned his arm over.

I was so moved that for a second or so I couldn’t speak. Suddenly the only picture in the room was his.

“It’s for my Pop”, he said, “he was a Rat of Tobruk. He’s passed now.”

“How was he when he came home?”

“He was fine… but he’d been wounded, hit by shrapnel, so he had that.”

“Did he talk about his experiences?”

“No, he never spoke of it, and he lived till he was 98.”

The Rats of Tobruk were soldiers of the Australian-led Allied garrison that held the Libyan port of Tobruk against the Afrika Corps during the Siege of Tobruk, which began on April 11, 1941 and ended on December 10. The port continued to be held by the Allies until its surrender on June 21, 1942.

Between April and August 1941, some 35,000 allies, including around 14,000 Australian soldiers, were besieged in Tobruk by a German–Italian army commanded by General Erwin Rommel. The garrison, commanded by Lieutenant General Leslie Morshead, included the 9th Australian Division (20th, 24th, and 26th Brigades), the 18th Brigade of the 7th Australian Division, four regiments of British artillery, and the 3rd Indian Motor Brigade.

According to the Australian War Memorial online archive, the Australian casualties from the 9th Division from 8th April to 25th October numbered 749 killed, 1,996 wounded, and 604 prisoners. The total losses in the 9th Division and attached troops from 1st March to 15th December amounted to 832 killed, 2,177 wounded and 941 prisoners.

The Australians held out for almost eight months against the German siege, which was abandoned by the Germans after 242 days when, on December 7, 1941, Rommel made the decision to fall back to Gazala. However, on June 21, 1942, Rommel began a second offensive that finally captured the fortress.

According to Colonel Ward A. Miller, “the Australians’ epic stand at Tobruk had a major impact on the war because the Germans suffered a serious and unexpected reversal. The Tobruk garrison demonstrated that the hitherto successful German blitzkrieg tactics could be defeated by resolute men who displayed courage and had the tactical and technical ability to coordinate and maximize the capabilities of their weapons and equipment in the defence.”

My proud assistant’s grandfather served in the 9th Division.

Although it’s that time of year when profound and raw emotions are held and privileged by collective remembrances across the nation, I wasn’t anticipating such a whack of it whilst hanging pictures at home.

“Every picture here tells a story”, I had said to him while we measured, drilled, and hung the first few, then suddenly here was his.

Later, while he was packing up, I asked on impulse if I might take a photograph of the tattoo, maybe write something respectful.

It wasn’t simply that I wished to capture the moment when a young married man and father of two small children paused in his work to share with me something of immense pride for him and his family, but I felt compelled to record a small, perfect work of remembrance inscribed into his flesh that both embodied and symbolised the spirit of his soldier-grandfather – as if it were a talisman I needed to hold unto myself for a little while. Revealed by his outstretched arm was a loving pride and authenticity of feeling with which I had somehow lost connection and was determined not to have disappear as soon as it had arrived.

There are memories that are suppressed, and remembrances that go on, and there are reminders of the things we are losing or have lost.

That tattoo was a reveille of sorts and a little tap toe for which I am grateful. And it’ll be that much harder to ignore the day.

By Maria Millers

For many the long-stablished story of the Gallipoli landings and to a lesser extent the Western Front remain the defining moments for our country. Just minted as a new nation in 1901, but still very British, our other achievements were put aside to lay the foundations of our national identity based on our participation in a war that ended up costing us so much in human terms: the injured and damaged, the toll on families and the disruption to our society

So why then have we not given the same importance to other aspects of our history? After all, the coming together of six British colonies as a new nation was an enormous achievement. Equally impressive were the pioneering social reforms that this newly federated nation was able to achieve ahead of many other countries: from granting women the right to vote and stand for elections, to social reforms like the old Age pension in 1909.Significant industrial and welfare reforms followed establishing Australia as ‘a path breaking new nation.’

Instead we have been made to accept war as a defining moment of our entry into nationhood.

War correspondent Charles Bean was most influential in creating the myth we have come to accept uncritically. His writing was often far from the reality of what it was like on the ground or mud at Gallipoli and the Western Front and he wrote what he thought the public back home wanted to hear. His writing also reflected the opinions of Officers in the AIF and the politicians back home.

But as political historian Benedict Anderson once said, national identity is a product of the imagination, and the stories we choose to tell ourselves about our past are the ones that define us. We have created an idealised sanitised version of a tall, khaki clad man with a slouch hat against a backdrop of some defining war image.

Yet among the first ‘Anzacs’ there were also Indigenous Australians, Australians of German descent, and Asian Australians. Some 1000 Indigenous Australians are thought to have served in the AIF, on Gallipoli and the Western Front. And 3000 Australian women enlisted in WW1 as nurses, doctors and in other supportive roles.

Another contentious issue is that our reflection of our military history never acknowledges the unspoken wars: The Frontier Wars between settlers and the Indigenous. The official Anzac story however has been nurtured and elevated to the status of a national myth. And myths are always preferred to historical accuracy.

The first Anzac Day march took place in 1916 and was very much about recruiting for the ongoing war. The first Dawn Service was in 1920 and by 1927 Anzac Day became a public holiday in all states and territories.

The horrendous loss of life in WW1 impacted on Australian society in so many ways. In a country of around 5 million 62000 had lost their lives. The ongoing focus on the moment of battle ignored the post war suffering of this huge number of men (and women) who returned shell shocked, wounded, disabled and disfigured. Equally impacted were the families who cared for them.

But politicians soon realized that there was political mileage in promoting the Anzac story, particularly when there was an unpopular war to prosecute. Prime Ministers from Hawke, Howard through to Gillard and Rudd have all used the Anzac story for political reasons.

Not that there was no criticism about what some called ‘legislated nostalgia’ that came to surround Anzac Day and its commemoration. Writers like George Johnston and playwright Alan Seymour challenged this approach to our military history.

Seymour’s play revolves around a father son conflict. The son, Hughie a university student refuses for the first time to attend the dawn service which traditionally was then followed by a day of drunkenness, illegal gambling and the inevitable brawls and public vomiting.

Alf his father has served and is an embittered man. This play which was so controversial back in the 60s is eerily relevant as it looks at so many issues we still grapple with today: immigration, health services, substance abuse, family violence and the recent rise of jingoism that has crept into our commemoration of Anzac and other wars we have been involved in.

Similarly, writer George Johnston in his autobiographical novel My Brother Jack brings us face to face with the reality for those tens of thousands who made it back alive, but damaged, Who can forget his description of the hallway of the Meredith home: a gas mask on the hall stand, sturdy walking sticks, artificial limbs propped up against a wall and the inevitable wheelchair, all powerful symbols of the impact of the war on those who served. And these were just the obvious physical injuries and not the mental ones that haunted so many then as well as those from recent conflicts such as the Vietnam War.

In the 1960s and 70s some Australians returning from the Vietnam War felt, as attitudes to the war changed, that their service during a decade of conflict 1962- 1972 was not appreciated by the public and that they were excluded from the Anzac tradition. They chose not to participate in Anzac Day events until October 1987 when a special Welcome Home Parade was held. Tragically 523 had died, 3000 were wounded and many still carry psychological wounds.

A more recent commentary comes from Iraq and Afghanistan veteran James Brown in his book Anzac’s Long Shadow where he argues that Australia is spending too much time, money and emotion on our obsession with the Anzac legend at the expense of current serving men and women. He dismisses any suggestion that criticism of the Anzac myth is ‘unaustralian.’ And he pulls no punches in calling out the clubs, charities and corporations that exploit the Anzac theme for commercial gain.

The term Anzackery was coined by historian Geoffrey Serle to draw attention to inflated rhetoric that has built up around Anzac Day celebrations. He would have found it disturbing to see how a jingoistic tone has crept into the commemorations. Add to that the ever-expanding range of Anzac merchandise from badges, oven mitts, Tshirts, poppies and other kitsch mementoes and Gallipoli cruises. It is hoped that some of the proceeds flow to making life easier for the veterans.

Myths and legends reflect the values of the societies in which they exist and at the core of the Anzac tradition is the belief that nations and men are made in war. This prevents us from asking important questions about who we are and what kind of society we want to live in.

Many Australians, while respectful of our war dead, are uncomfortable with the way we now remember them. Families will always mourn their loved ones and respect memories of their ancestors without the need for exaggerated sentimentalism.

Australia is a very different country today and choosing Gallipoli as the foundation moment for our nation is fraught with problems of leaving out so much of our rich and complex history from the national narrative. We should also remind ourselves of the reality of all wars, so vividly expressed in the following poem by Wilfred Owen:

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Notes: Latin phrase is from the Roman poet Horace: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”