By Anthony Haritos

Yes, we were cheap. And we were very nasty. Yes, we did fuck your mind over. Yes, it’s true; we did twist your moral compass completely out of shape so that you’d never ever remember you ever ever had one.

Because – and this is a tad difficult since I feel we’re now old pals – you never ever had one.

Here’s the rub, baby. We worked very well together. A great team. So good in fact, they’re gone now. All of them. And there’s no one left to speak for you.

IN THE BEGINNING …

“It’s time now to round up all these subversives and traitors.”

When supporting the NO vote in The Voice includes this Facebook statement we have a problem.

When it was preceded by “Witch” and followed by “She should be charged with treason”, it’s not just Professor Marcia Langton who has a problem, nor the two authors, but all of us.

The last time we went through this routine bigtime the footnote was,

“Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me”(1)

Given the movies documenting the descent from first line to last, one might suspect the line was placed mischievously. Yes, daily life is filled with boredom but …

This post isn’t to slag the creators of the comments nor defend the Yes vote, which is facing imminent defeat yet which on balance one can only advocate.

It’s however reminding how people can be easily transformed into cauldrons of hatred, and of the ramifications.

Germany 1930s from which the “Then they came for me …” poem sprang, saw Nazi media manipulators along with media and munitions Barons slavering for favour oversee the transformation.

(I feel like a crashing bore writing this stuff, ‘cos we already know this, It’s elementary, my Dear Watson, isn’t it?)

But us, Australians circa 2023; sophisticated, first-world, well-travelled etc, transformed?

Apparently yes.

Murdoch’s News Limited is gleefully consolidating its ability to twist our psyche into a contorted horror show.

No healing or counter will come from slavering Opposition leader Peter Dutton and his cabal whose only course is to ram the dark message home.

It’s inevitable: Blackfellas are going to face a more hostile, racist Australia than last year. What else besides?

(My fellow) Australians, don’t get sucked into feeding this growing vortex of hate.

Berlin mid-1930s images show a society going along just dandy until one morning footpaths were covered with shattered glass.

Australians are still at the Falling-In-Love stage with Fox News’ younger relative Sky News. Have we publicly considered its raison d’ etre? Why does it exist? Why that particular agro one-dimensional format? It’s new, glittering, polished, seductive, and we’re bunnies in the spotlight.

The polished art form which Fake-News-Obfuscation became during the 2016 US Trump-Clinton election was then ripe for export. Where next? Down Under?

CODA. Giving away trade secrets …

Orwell’s 1984? No, we’re Huxley’s Soma-fueled Brave New World, ‘cos you’ll never know you’ve been incarcerated nor that you’re on the stuff.’

We’re warm honey trickling through your veins. We’re here merely reminding you of what you already instinctively know. We’re a global money-spinning machine, baby, just keep dropping in the coins and we’ll keep pressing your booster buttons. We’re here for your pleasure. Relax, and enjoy. We’re The Future, baby.

We’re the voice.

(1) 1946 post-war confessional prose by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984). Wikipedia:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out –

Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out –

Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me –

And there was no one left to speak for me.

By Andrew Klein

I remember that as a teenager we had to sing ‘God save the Queen’. This was done at school, in cinemas and public events. Often this was linked to stories of horrific battles and wars. I was told that it was a good thing to fight for ‘Queen and country’. I really did believe as a child that somehow it was the job of young men to save the Queen and once that was done, whoever was left would save the country. It always involved saving virtuous people from complete bastards. I once asked if the Queen had been involved with less savage projects, building farms or housing estates. Apparently not, she was our Sovereign a very abstract concept that meant that ‘God had anointed’ her and placed her over me to rule me.

I looked up what ‘anointed’ meant and found that involved senior clergy and holy oil. The process of anointed was not included in the films of the coronation. Turned out that the staff had forgotten the recipe for that oil and that new supplies had to be made in a hurry.

Here I was, 12 years old and discovering that my Queen was my ruler by right of birth and a concoction of manmade oils applied by men wearing flowing dresses and that she was attributed with all kinds of magic, least of all the ability to motivate large numbers of young men much like me to go forth and kill large numbers of men just like me and of course the people of her ‘dominion’ and selectively anyone who seriously annoyed her. There were cenotaphs (empty tombs) all over the countryside attesting to what appeared to be divine will.

By the time I was 19, the dream had worn off, in the reality of life it seemed that our Sovereign had little interest in the wellbeing of ordinary folk and that pomp and circumstance, catering for tourists and occasionally foreign wars summed up her imagined role. As a figure head she became more and more irrelevant. Killing foreigners seemed to be more of a state function designed to protect assets and investments, resources. Moral high ground was always found or created to justify what in hindsight was state sanctioned murder. Of course, wars and created chaos are ways of advancing a state’s plans, that is the sad reality.

I met, on my journey through life, many who were once the enemies of my Sovereign and when times were good, we became friends. It’s funny how you can wake up, feel the rising sun and see the blue skies above and then, in an instant, you find your mind’s eye looking at a cenotaph. If we had all been honest at the start, accepting of the fact that there was no more holy oil that created rulers and that all of this was in essence an arrangement by mutual consent, maybe we could have built farms and houses instead of cenotaphs.

Dear Pauline,

I’ve read that you have been confused and outraged that the number of people laying claim to Aboriginal ancestry is increasing. If you bear with me, I think I can explain.

I’m a middle-aged white woman who was raised in a very white-seeming rural community. As far as I knew, I had minimal contact with anyone who was of Aboriginal descent. Looking back, I can remember families who were darker than the Spanish, curlier haired than the black-haired Welsh and Irish… and I now know many of these people had Aboriginal ancestors because, while they didn’t ever speak of it back then, they’ve spoken about it now, or written about it in their family trees.

But when I was growing up, if someone’s Nanna was one of the tens of thousands of brown skinned young women who’d been taken from their Aboriginal homes, raised on a mission, and sent to serve as domestic help in the homes and farms of our country, most avoided talking about it. If they were fair enough to pass as white, they never mentioned their Aboriginal family origins because they saw and heard the nasty treatment that their darker-skinned relatives got. They saw that they were less likely to be treated decently. Less likely to get a job, more likely to be bullied, bashed, arrested, or even killed. They were very quiet about their family tree, or they invented a family mythology that explained the darker features of their complexion.

It was discrimination that they wanted to avoid, and fear that fascism could return and see whole sections of society being marked out as inferior, even marked for genocide. It wouldn’t be the first time. Nobody wants that kind of horror visited on their children, or their grandchildren. They watch the news, and see the surges of fascism, racism, neo-Nazis wearing swastikas in public and throwing salutes at rallies. I don’t think their fear was unreasonable.

Sadly, they thought it best to let the heritage be lost – so much of it was destroyed already; what was the point of putting a target on your family’s back in an effort to preserve or re-claim a cultural heritage that was mere scraps of what it had once been, when the risks were so clear, and so harsh? Loving parents quietly allowing their children and grandchildren to become completely assimilated into white society is a safe, if tragic, option.

Whole generations have arisen while the elders of these nominally white families are still holding to their resolution to bring their descendants into the safety of the mainstream.

There are many in these families who know the truth. It’s a bit of an open secret, and as time passes and the old people pass away, the secret becomes a dilemma; should the children know? We’re in a safer society now. Most of the younger kids pass as white without question, and the darker skinned members of the family look well-tanned and maybe… nobody really cares about their skin colour anymore. Or nobody who matters. Only a handful of white supremacist dickheads think anything of it if their nurse, vet, retail assistant, or magistrate isn’t obviously pasty-white. Aboriginal heritage doesn’t carry the risk of bringing an automatic social downgrade anymore, especially for people who pass as white enough not to get brutally discriminated against by police, bouncers, nurses, security guards, employers, prospective in-laws etc.

This brings another dilemma for the younger generations: if they “come out” as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent, they will also “out” their family members. What if their cousins don’t want to be identified as anything but generic white people? Is it fair to claim your own cultural heritage and ancestry if doing so will expose your cousin or siblings to nasty racist discrimination?

So, Pauline, I think that the increasing number of people who identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander is a great reason. It’s because racist fearmongering is having a diminishing impact. Despite the best efforts of racists everywhere, Australia is smarter and more knowledgeable about race now. Not as many people are as deeply racist. Not as many people fear the resurgence of genocidal fascism in this country. Not as many people feel it’s necessary to hide their heritage.

More Australians now accept that “white looking” Aboriginal people have every right to ‘tick the box’. It’s becoming normalised that regardless of whether a person with Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage has been raised on country in their ancestor’s ancient traditions, or whether they grew up in bland suburbia, the people who are claiming or re-claiming their cultural heritage should do so freely. Sure, they may get a job or a scholarship that’s been designated for Aboriginal people – but guess what? Aboriginal people now come in all shades. Some of the palest people I know (and I mean kids so white they have no visible eyebrows, and you get snow-blind just looking at them in sunlight) are first cousins to some who are quite noticeably brown and of obvious Aboriginal descent.

And for the Aboriginal people who are quite obviously of Aboriginal heritage, there’s no point in not marking the ‘of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent’ box. It’s not like the discrimination against your dark skin goes away if you deny your genetic heritage.

So then there’s the people who are in-between. Most of the time, nobody cares about their skin colour. They might or might not be marked as Aboriginal for the purposes of discrimination. They may or may not have been raised in households of intergenerational trauma and poverty caused by the destruction of their originating culture. Should they tick the box or not? I’d say it’s up to them.

It’s certainly not up to you or me, Pauline.

By Allan Richardson

Planksy, a highly experienced fitter, turner and boilermaker, cracked his head on the hoist after forgetting to let go a runaway rattle gun, also severely damaging a green Mitsubishi Magna, so no real loss there. But following HIA protocol, the shop steward sent Planksy off for a mandatory 11 days.

But so as not to be a burden on society, Planksy undertook free government transition training to be an Area Controller of a solar farm conglomerate, a change from being on the tools. He declared the course quite straightforward, apart from some new terminology and, as expected in the government-sponsored RoboTrans, TMFAs.

Because the transition course was, strictly speaking, incomplete, the course instructor subcontracted a Personal Trainer to direct exercise classes – a healthy body makes a healthy mind, said the PT, gibberishly – and as is the wont of said profession, punctuated their endless drivel with ‘Awesome!’.

Then a well-earned counter lunch before a gruelling afternoon session, known as ‘brainstorming’. Planksy and the others had to work out what the course should involve. The participants did a pretty good job, Planksy opined after the role play. It even reminded some students of a TV series!

* * * * *

It’s 2030, and surprisingly, the atmospheric CO2 has barely shifted since the 2022 election, and the Labor/Greens coalition governments that followed cannot agree amongst themselves, and are both going to go it alone, like the Libs and Gnats did after their destruction at the 2025 election. But unlike the earlier dissolution of the conservative coalition, the government parties are hoping to retain sufficient relevance to maintain their parties’ registrations. But the ever-increasing Indies see that as a bridge too far, as they finalise the Private Members Bill to at last legislate the UBI. (If there are any survivors left in the climate-damaged country to take advantage of this belated necessity.)

Meanwhile, at the International Head Office of Spark Central, Planksy has a problem. ‘We’re expecting to be about 15 gigawatts short over the peak’ said Planksy. ‘Someone ring the store and stock up. Get 20 gigawatts while you’re there. Can’t discount a possible outage, with the floodwater lapping at the panels and the substations partly submerged. I’ve been trained to manage this sort of common, unanticipated disappointment. My comprehensive training course included advanced Disappointment Management modules, featuring another prominent guest lecturer, who unfortunately failed to show up for the practical. And someone said the voltage was down a bit. Better get a truckload of volts, to be sure.

I’m not trying to be a prevenient naysayer. About 30 years ago, after I stopped working for da man, I helped a CBT facilitator to secure a State government contract to develop audio-visual Computer-Based Training modules. We developed a 60 second pilot as a sample for just over $70,000, but there were three of us. The module showed trainees how to effectively wield a broom safely, with the background wall featuring the three different types of fire-retardents. A work of art!

And I did a TAFE course myself about 20 years ago in Damage Mitigation, known by most people as venomous snake handling. Sure, I was about 60, and all the other participants … weren’t. But you wouldn’t feed any of them, far less having them in any way responsibly for your well-being!

If the transition to renewables hasn’t been mapped out in detail for the transition training, implementation and ongoing management of the new way, then Labor has failed. They’ve been spruiking Global Warming and Climate Change for the past decade, but they haven’t done their homework. They were excused for not announcing detailed plans before the election, just to see it squandered by relevance-deprived fifth columnists, but they’re the government now, and they can come out of hiding. Not that the LNP can even spell AGW!

The operation was successful, but the patient died.

It had been a long, hot day by the time Jake and I arrived at a far north SA town where we were to stay overnight before heading home the following morning.

Unpacked and cleaned-up we did what most blokes in an outback town do after a long, hot day: we headed for one of the town’s two pubs.

In we walked, heading straight to the bar I couldn’t help but notice that all eyes were on us.

“I wonder why everyone’s looking at us,” I whispered to Jake.

“Think about it,” he replied. “You’re a white fella walking in with a black fella.”

Jake, as you’ve guessed, is Aboriginal.

Our cool reception nonetheless disturbed me. Jake was a talented footballer and cricketer who back home was held in high esteem. Jake couldn’t walk down the street without people wanting to chat to him about last week’s game. This was the exact opposite.

Back to the story…

After a drink and a meal, we headed off to the other pub in town – a new place – where we’d planned to catch up with workmates who were also passing through.

And what a much nicer place it was… until we left to head back to our motel.

Walking through the reception area we saw a young Aboriginal girl being abused by three drunk, young white blokes. Their language and insults were disgusting.

”You’re nothing but a half-caste bitch.”

”You’re probably a slut.”

”People like you are better dead.”

And on it went. It was vile.

The girl, as you would imagine, was distressed and in tears.

Then one of the blokes saw Jake watching the proceedings, walked over, stood in his face, and shouted, “What the fuck are you staring at, ya boong?”

I squeezed in between them, stared at the other bloke, and came out with something passive, “Hey, lay off him. How about we get out of here and go our seperate ways?”

And off we all went. Jake and I headed to our motel while I assume the aggressors went to the other pub to continue with more mayhem.

At 2am I was awoken by a knock on my door. It was Jake. He was crying.

”What the hell’s the matter?” I asked.

His answer floored me: “I’ve never had a white fella stick up for me before.”

(Damn near brought a tear to my eye, too.)

To me, it was just an incident. To Jake it was something stronger. My one small action seemed to help to right a lifetime of wrongs.

So I’m voting Yes for Jake. And the tens of thousands like him.

By Jane Salmon

Does it require a refugee being passed like a parcel from well-meaning ally to ally in a relay of 70 towns? No.

That is way too extreme.

Many asylum seekers have bravely walked before: to mixed effect. It is however possible for refugees to campaign for a better visa from their precarious Aussie homes (such as they are).

Recent precedents offer hope to some Tamils who left Sri Lanka 12-16 years ago. The in-country conditions of the time are now mapped out for Tamils applying to Immigration.

If you are not Tamil, you can still assemble the evidence of conditions in your country at the time you were forced to leave and submit it with your application.

Refugees cannot all access mainstream multi-media campaigns. Refugee sector resources are not there. Moreover, your privacy is precious.

Right now, it seems that “getting a go” does require each refugee to put in an application for Ministerial Intervention through their lawyers … even if things have not gone well in the courts or by negotiation with Immigration before.

Will you buy new hiking boots plus podiatry … or a lawyer? It’ll cost at least $250 for either. I promise you, you’ll need a reputable lawyer, so start there.

Hard-pressed refugees don’t need to abandon their responsibilities at home to obtain a future. Keeping families safe is vital.

Skip the boots. Get someone to help write up your story and assemble home country data.

Perhaps you feel up to engaging with your local community (in the same way some high-profile families have) to become better known.

Bona fides & connection or trust do help speak to your character.

As we all know, volunteering is a great way to build up language skills, recover mental health and learn the written and unwritten rules of a place. But also protect your own interests; give of yourself only when you can.

Beware the patronisation of Anglo allies. We all have egos and agendas. We are all scrambling to show off what we think we can do. Being pulled in many different directions may not be what you need. Try to define your situation yourself.

But have courage. There are signs that greater fairness is possible.

We see you. Tell activists what you need. We are here to be educated and to help.

Let’s give uncertainty “the boot”. Get those applications and petitions in. We need a register of applications made.

Otherwise, “These Boots Are Made For Walking” and there will be a fluoro-clad, backpack-laden throng of all ages and stages bootscooting outside APH until everyone has permanency. Those optics could be pretty overwhelming for any government.

 

Graphic by Aja Bon

By Jane Salmon

Eight generations ago, my dirt-poor Celtic ancestors were colonisers. They logged trees, eroded the land. They brutalised animals. They farmed, fought, bred and built for themselves.

They probably also abused Aboriginal women or stockmen and participated in genocide. The evidence is well hidden but pops up in hints such as Aboriginal families bearing my surname across the rural area where my great-grandfather worked.

This has been minimised by subsequent generations determined to steep their identity in middle-class suburban “niceness”. They claimed to be “self-made” bankers. Land ownership has been an obsession for all of them.

The same Aborigines who were told by my forebears that they didn’t polish the silver properly could not have any level of dominion over their own lives. They were only given the vote in 1967.

“Money spent on them was wasted,” said the same patriarchs who stole their wages.

Perhaps white women should identify with Aborigines more. Yet Aborigines have always been welcoming to refugees, hospitable to me. The Aboriginal passports sent to refugees on Manus are a case in point.

So why should new migrants care? Because erasure and homogenisation keeps happening. You may have come here to escape discrimination, but you also want to protect your own precious cultural heritage.

And where was the equality Jacinta Price speaks of, that day in 1993 when we saw an Aboriginal woman turned away from a half empty church-run women’s refuge in Eastern Sydney? White hookers who had actually injected drugs in the waiting room of Childrens’ Court (while awaiting custodial hearings) were treated better.

Where is the equality when the nearest petrol station is many hours drive from where you were raised and where a handful of green beans costs $20?

The level playing field does not exist. The LNP are the first to claim every advantage or opportunity for themselves before kicking the ladder away. They socialise their losses while privatising profit. Then they whine about red tape … when not tangling lowlier Australians up in it.

I will be voting Yes proudly. Affirmative action of any kind is not handicapping the rest of us. It is redress.

And no matter how hard or tedious the dialogue is, it is honorable and necessary.

By Allan Richardson

I was attempting to complete an online appointment request form for a non-urgent plumbing job.

I filled in all the contact details, except for the phone number, the format being:

Prefilled country code field: +61. Tick.

(###) ### ####. Hmm.

Do people still have landlines? Not really, though this format started disappearing in 1994 and was totally gone by 1997.

The rest of the website’s functionality was schmick. The world’s first ever website appeared in 1991, so chronology dictates it’s older than the plumber that I’d used previously.

So, donning my lateral thinking cap, and noticing that the postcode field was missing, and that I’d had no difficulty with this page previously, I concluded that their website had been:

Triumphant trumpet fanfare …

*** UPGRADED ***

And the 11yo interning technician may have had a few too many red cordials and inadvertently added a digit field; one too many for a mobile format. And the software clearly expected the phone fields to be completed before accepting SUBMIT. A dead end for me …

I rang and spoke to a nice woman, surprisingly chatty at 07:40, who was surprised, but not dismissive of my issue on the phone. I don’t sound like a doddery git in his 80th year apparently lol Video OFF!

Now for the Samaritanisation; they can’t do my job, but I had a job only half completed myself, so I opened their site once more. Then I had to re-enter all my details, and a message describing what I was doing, and that I’d added a zero to my phone number, and voila! SUBMITTED!

‘Oops, I accidentally deleted the postcode field. Hang on, I’ll ju… OK, coming, mum!’.

As a devout 🙏 follower of the 🔱 ‘Why wouldn’t you offer a hand if you thought it might help, and you have no pressing engagements’ (better known by the catchy initialism WWYOAHIYTIMHAYHNPE (An acronym if you’re of Polish xtrykzyn)) lifestyle choice, though probably tagged as a meddling fucking opinionated interfering old git (who’s impervious to your barbs, you beardless whelp, you whipper-snapper!).

HOT TIP

If confronted by precocious technokinder, learn the following patter:

‘I’m not really up to date with these basic wee computers. My expertise is in supercomputers, mostly designed by Seymour Cray (no, not one of the brothers, so don’t worry about a surprise kickin’). These developed hundreds of Petaflops using pipeline burst technology and needing Nitrogen cooling. One Petaflop, as any professional like yourself would know, but just to refresh your memory, is one quadrillion floating-point operations per second. Or a thousand Teraflops. Or a million Gigaflops. Or a billion Megaflops. Or … What’s that? I’ll let you get back to your little hobby. Sorry, chore’.

By Allan Richardson

Few would disagree that right now the world is a pressure cooker of aggression, despair, discontent, bitter disappointment and fear.

Australia, being geographically isolated, is at least free from cross-border incursions by hostile forces, but as we’ll soon discover in Ukraine, hand-to-hand combat has become yesterday’s war-mongering, and adolescent gamers may become the silent aggressors with the most sophisticated toys ever!

But Australia’s security won’t be determined by surveilling 34,000km of mostly irregular coastline, boasting over 1,000 estuaries. We’d quickly spot attackers should they attempt an incursion in a populated area, and for those choosing less hospitable entry points, may the desert take the hindmost.

Like so many other politically polarised nation States, the danger is in internal conflict. Not only do we seem unable to respectfully recognise our original inhabitants (despite the comforting assurances by bigoted racists), we seem unable to agree to implement policies of mutual benefit to warring political parties. And there’s the rub.

What potential we have here in Australia! Our moderate climate makes for comfortable living conditions, yet we enjoy the enviably ideal environment for generating renewable energy. First, this can make us potentially energy self-sufficient, a critical factor in mitigating global warming. As well, we can create a timely energy export hub without resorting to the extraction of fossil fuels!

But we currently have an insurmountable problem! Our national conversation is monopolised by two major political parties, both in thrall to the fossil fuel industry.

Despite the removal of the party responsible for the decade of neglect, we are not seeing Labor’s reforms in energy policy, central to their last Federal election campaign.

It’s not drawing too long a bow to suggest that the only long-term solution is to eschew the two-party system. The LNP makes no secret of promoting continued steaming coal and gas extraction, with the highly questionable prospect of building our first nuclear energy plant. Expected to be completed at about the same time as the non-arrival of our third-of-a-billion-dollar virtual submarine joint defense agreement. Labor does make a secret of continuing to approve fossil fuel projects but does it anyway! How can this even be a possibility in the face of international scientific condemnation?

The surveys I’ve seen indicate that the majority of Australians want to see an orderly energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Regardless of the influence exerted by the Greens, they’re not going to be able to radically change Labor’s platform in time to abate the existential threat of climate collapse. Timing is everything.

No political party in power is ever going to sacrifice the status quo and ‘void’ itself, but we do need political parties to be dissolved sooner rather than later, and Independents to be elected to represent the views of their constituents. You know. Like in a democracy.

The world is in extremis. Yesterday’s solutions just won’t cut it. Everything is at stake and we’re sleepwalking into extinction.

As Metallica would say:

Never cared for what they say
Never cared for games they play
Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
And I know …

By Allan Richardson

I haven’t heard much comprehensive analysis on how Dutton will fare if the No vote gets up in the upcoming Recognition and The Voice referendum.

Much superficial political commentary seems to suggest that a victory will set Dutton up as the strong opposition leader for the next federal election, because Albanese recklessly (some might say) pinned his and his government’s achievement on a successful referendum. Eggs/basket.

Just imagine the chat in the increasingly likely event that the Yes vote will fail.

The backslapping and merriment in which the LNP will indulge with much fanfare and ceremony will be short-lived.

Forget the rusted-on advocates for either position; the referendum was never about them. Like forever, the goal for each side was to capture the ‘undecideds’. And if the referendum fails, the LOTO will be seen as the strong leader. Until the dust clears …

And after the hullabaloo, when nothing has changed to close the gap, the First Nations People will still be just as disadvantaged as before in every way; ways that have been decried by all parties, with whatever level of sincerity one normally attributes to politicians. And many of the undecided-but-No voters will start to wonder about the wisdom of their actions. Too late.

The advocates for the Yes vote are not going to shut up, and all the Labor, Greens and Teals will pile onto Dutton as the self-appointed ‘Nokesman’ for the ‘debate’. Any half-decent election campaign will have him seen as the bigoted racist that he is. And given the broad remit of the NACC, there’s every reason that he and his co-liars should be referred to the Commission, for clearly identified misinformation relating to something as critical as modifying our founding document! But this won’t benefit Labor. Albanese would be (correctly) identified as a Prime Minister unable to prosecute his signature policy. The disenchanted would migrate to the Greens and the Teals.

And my guess is that he’ll be blamed for any political unrest that a failed Recognition and Voice referendum will engender. And there’ll be plenty of that! He’s a goner, but his vitriol and spitefulness will never be forgotten. Being publicly dismissive of respectful requests by a 65,000-year civilisation is glaring, unmitigated arrogance.

Continued from The Times they are Changing.

Yes, we are on the verge of another era of Enlightenment.

From a world where we made enormous technological advances into one that will make the previous one seem dull. And we must fully understand what has occurred in the past and decide what to take into the future.

Moving from Enlightenment 1 to Enlightenment 2 with only a soft glow of understanding will take courage. Do we have it? In terms of change, the new Enlightenment of artificial intelligence will make the old seem placid by comparison.

“The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.”

Last week, in my piece, “The Times They are Changing” I focused on the changes society can expect in the future. My observations included those suggested in the recently released Generational Report. In this piece, I’m looking at those elements in our society today that I consider sacrosanct, and we should take with us into the new enlightenment.

In doing so, I make the point that we never fully understood the first Enlightenment: The Age of Reason. People of my generation have seen more change in the world than any other. Advances in medicine, technology, computing, building and different facets of our living seem incomprehensible sometimes.

But did we ever understand the difference between the purpose of life and its reason?

On the one hand, our intellectual understanding has presented us with technological change that is mind-blowing in its dimension. However, our capacity to understand ourselves and how we relate to another is still in its infancy. Neuroscience is still in its discovery stage and is just beginning to understand how our brains function.

What follows are my thoughts on those things that bind us together, that make us human and humane. No matter how much we technologically advance, we should always keep in touch with them.

1 If we were an enlightened society, we would love and respect our fellow humans with faithfulness and care.

2 We would do unto others what we expect them to do unto us. We would strive to do no harm to others and our world. We would love life, enjoy it, and marvel at its heritage.

3 We would compose independent opinions relevant to what we know and understand as the truth. We would not corrupt the facts as we know them.

4 We would not allow ourselves to be led blindly by others.

5 We would test our opinions constantly, checking our ideas against our facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it did not conform to them.

6 We would readily admit it when we are wrong, knowing that humility is the basis of intellectual advancement, and that truth enables human progress.

7 Our sex lives, whatever our inclinations, are nobody’s business but our own and should be practised that way. We should leave others to enjoy their sex lives in private, which is none of our business.

8 No one has an ownership of righteousness. We should seek not to judge but to understand. We would pursue dialogue ahead of confrontation.

9 Our mantra for the future should be internationalism before nationalism, acknowledging that the planet Earth does not have infinite resources and needs care and attention. If we are to survive on it, we would value the future on a timescale longer than our own.

10 The individual may have rights determined by the common good, but no man is an island and can only exist and have his or her ambitions fulfilled by a collective of like-minded people.

11 We would insist on equality of opportunity regardless of sex, race or age, conceding that knowledge gives understanding.

12 We would teach our children not what to think but how to. In addition, we would show them how to critically and rationally disagree with us. Above all, we would show them how to evaluate evidence to think critically, and we would show them we would never seek to indoctrinate them in any way.

13 In our schools, we would open our kids’ minds to a comprehension of ethics.

14 We would never shy away from decent, even irrational decent and always respect the right of others to disagree with us. Bad laws should be open to the harshest criticism.

15 We would never walk away from administering justice but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.

16 Lastly, we would question everything. What we see, what we feel, what we hear, what we read and what we are told until we understand the truth of it because thoughtlessness is the residue of things not understood and can never be a replacement for fact.

If these things indeed are the embodiment of the first Enlightenment. How do we stack up? Some societies and individuals could lay claim to attaining a measure of it. For example, in some countries, gender equality is more readily accepted, and there have been educational advances. Overall, the reader would conclude that, in most instances, our Enlightenment has yet to progress much.

This is no more empathised than in our understanding of free speech.

Are we honestly enlightened if we think we must legislate an emotion people already have and use to express hatred?

There is something fundamentally and humanely wrong with the proposition. An intolerable indecency suggests that we have made no advancement in our discernment of free speech.

If free speech’s only purpose is to denigrate, insult and humiliate, then we need to reappraise its purpose. Some say it identifies those perpetrating wrongdoing, but if it creates more evil than good, it’s a strange freedom for a so-called enlightened society to bequeath its citizens.

By RomeoCharlie

Writing in Crikey today, First Nations woman and well-credentialled writer, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, said it was telling that those who advocate No to the Voice are usually old white men who grew up under the White Australia Policy.

She goes on to name a group of men she calls ‘white patriarchs who wield enormous influence’ including John Howard, Rupert Murdoch, Gary Johns and Peter Dutton.

It is probably cold comfort to her given the prevailing opinion about the likely success or failure of the Voice Referendum that not all elderly white men are opposed to the voice.

I am part of a group of such men ranging in age from mid 60s to 86 who meet regularly for Friday lunch (Thursday if Friday is a public holiday) and have done so for more than 40 years.

Of this group of nine, I believe all support the concept of the Voice and intend to vote that way. We believe in the proposition that this is a relatively simple change to the constitution carrying none of the threats that are propagated by opponents using disinformation, misinformation and outright lies to generate fear in an uninformed element of the population.

Some of us abhor the position taken by the Federal Opposition’s Indigenous spokesperson, Jacinta Jampijinpa Price not because she’s an Indigenous person, or a woman but because she represents a political party with a long history of opposition to Indigenous advancement and aspirations in her home territory, and which like the Liberals and Nationals opposes the Voice.

I cannot speak for my lunch companions but my own feeling is that the Voice referendum offers us two very positive outcomes if successful: it will give First Nations people some of the justice they are very politely seeking and undoubtedly deserve but, more importantly for me, it will show those opposing the voice – the fearful whites, the craven Opposition politicians, the lie-promulgating hate-mongering Murdoch media and Sky-after-dark spite spitters – that they do not have the influence they believe they have.

The decline in their influence began with the failure of their opposition to the Same Sex Marriage Legislation and was cemented in the election of a Labor Government despite a sustained campaign of half-truths and lies.

Those of us disgusted at the Opposition and its sword-carriers have an opportunity now to put what should be the last nail in the coffin of Murdoch influence over political events in Australia. Vote yes.

I know they are coming for my stuff. I read the Telegraph.

Aboriginal, gay, unemployed single mothers stalk our streets. Refugees flood our beaches. Transgender porn fills libraries and small businessmen weep in the street while being beaten by communist Union Officials. All while Vietnamese, Chinese, Indonesian and assorted other hordes are all poised. Plus, Aboriginals want my suburban block.

But even so. We have the media we deserve. It has been created to sell us what we want. To pander to our particularly vacuous modern brand of fear and loathing.

In 2018, Steve Bannon observed that: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

But this seemingly pithy observation serves to distract from the actually tragic reality. Namely, it is impossible to flood the zone with shit. It is already flooded with shit. Well before there was a right-wing media the modern broadcasting landscape was already a barren wasteland studded with noxious cesspits. Yes, in one far corner there is a rarely accessed little door that is labelled ‘The real world and rational commentary’. But nobody is interested.

So, while we attack ‘the media’. The reality is that we already have precisely the media that we want. Our media is full of very sick and perverted ideas and people because our society is full of sick and perverted people. We only like to pretend we are ‘nice’. (Get over it.)

As a baby boomer, like all my peers, I respond instantly to fear and loathing. Our generation was going to change the world. We would forsake the military industrial complex that had enslaved earlier, less enlightened generations. We would tear down hypocrisy, religion, and bigotry.

Yet while the dream lasted just a fleeting childhood, it has haunted us all ever since. We cultivated a phantasm of hip skepticism and now all we have left is disenchantment and disbelief.

The new millennium has thus been especially difficult for boomers. We had corporately pledged to live fast and die young and pure – until we inherited. Then we caged the chickens and set aside actively believing or not-believing. It was complicated. After all, why go to all the bother of believing in things when you have cable? It is much easier to occupy a shallow and fleeting attention-span with porn, action movies, and lectures on the need to be terribly, terribly afraid.

So – we are the media. Every caricature you see selling hate and Dazz^TM on the tele is just a pale reflection of someone living on your street. Television is full of horribly ill-informed and shallow creeps simply because society is full of horribly ill-informed and shallow creeps. There are few deep thinkers simply because we don’t spend time thinking. We are not a population of thinkers. We collectively crave for distraction and entertainment; not information.

We like to think that we are good scholarly people, who like to watch and listen to ‘good’ media, but we are not. In fact, we are a bunch of morally and intellectually corrupt creeps – and so our media is jam-packed with morally and intellectually corrupt creeps. But they are photogenic and charismatic creeps.

Yes, right-wing media channels are fashioning output carefully tailored to a receptive audience. But so are the rest. So, if ‘the media’ is atrocious, it is because we – collectively – are atrocious. Moreover, if we want to continue with an actually democratic system, where everyone has both a media and a voice, then we will always have a media that is chaotic, partisan, and flooded with ‘shit’. Until we become some entirely other sort of animal that is not snarky, horrible, ill-informed and intellectually corrupt. In other words: something entirely non-human.

Until then: Viva la chaos.

I do not believe that the President of the US is personally responsible for the state of the US economy. No rational person could believe such a thing.

However, lots of right-wing commentators want to assert that Biden is single-handedly destroying the US economy. They propose that the advent of ‘Bidenomics’ has led to soaring inflation, growing unemployment, stagnant wages, and a stock exchange headed south.

This is bullshit. All of it. The correlation between who might be president, and the condition of the US economy, is tentative at best. But even if there was a direct and uncomplicated correlation, the whole ‘Bidenomics’ narrative is still bullshit.

The next time a right-winger wants to spout nonsense about ‘Bidenomics’, first refer them to the following four charts, then advise them to either piss-off, or stop parading their ignorance in public.

While such an exposure to reality is unlikely to stop them talking bullshit, it will make you feel better. Plus, you will have avoided the need to talk any further with a fool.

Win/Win.

Sources:

Inflation:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1312060/us-inflation-rate-federal-reserve-interest-rate-monthly/

Wages:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1312060/us-inflation-rate-federal-reserve-interest-rate-monthly/

Stock Market:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1312060/us-inflation-rate-federal-reserve-interest-rate-monthly/

Employment:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1312060/us-inflation-rate-federal-reserve-interest-rate-monthly/