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Time to think

Week 29 provided some interesting conversations with passers-by, with breaks between, giving time to think.

The first thought that came to mind was the apparent inability of government to deal with two really major issues for Australia – Climate Change and Closing the Gap.

Living in the NT, where 30% of our population is of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent, and to do so at a time when recent, unprecedented bush fires have brought to prominence the ignored skills of our First Nations people in managing fire and land, the two issues are easily linked.

But they are also ones where governments cannot see easy answers, so they dump the issues in the ‘too hard’ basket and ignore the fact that time is their enemy.

Do you remember Tony Abbott’s reference to ‘lifestyle choices’ in relation to the WA government threatening to reduce or remove services from remote communities?

We are daily damaging the lives of those in remote communities by failing both to support their right to their culture and to include them in discussions on how best to achieve that end.

To state the bleeding obvious, those whom we elect to provide us with our laws and security, seem blind to all but those issues which relate to increasing wealth – and not necessarily for everyone!

The extent of animal life lost in the bush fires was horrendous, and valiant efforts were made, by those who care, to nurse back to life as many as possible of those victims of the fires which were badly burnt.

These included many koalas, whose habitat was also decimated by the fires.

But the embers had not yet cooled, when that habitat was further denuded for profit!

Untampered with, the environment provides many people – and other life forms – a quality of life which money cannot buy, yet governments are hell-bent on supporting those who are happy to destroy the environment in the search for a profit.

COVID-19 has, indirectly, been a friend to conservatives, as dealing with the pandemic, making it a headline issue, allows the Coalition government the ideal opportunity to ignore everything else, and, secretly, plan greater levels of support for fossil fuels.

I have read The Lord of the Rings many times and, as with CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, have felt the good vs evil theme underlying many aspects of the works.

Certainly, the picture of Scott Morrison, fondling a piece of coal, is etched in my mind with Morrison’s features replaced by those of Gollum, as portrayed in the film of JRR Tolkien’s famous book!

As a progressive, I welcome necessary change with open arms. I was 3 when WWII began, was briefly evacuated, with my family, away from London during the Battle of Britain, enjoyed a complete revision of the education system under Clement Attlee and escaped the UK before the Iron Lady’s disastrous reign of terror, so the changes I have seen and experienced at first hand in my time to date have been both awesome and troubling.

Awesome, in terms of the almost exponential rate of developments in technology.

Troubling, because of the extent to which conservative forces have driven a wedge between those who have much more than enough, and those who can barely support life! And in the process tried to destroy the trades unions.

Unions, like corporations and governments, have their heroes and their villains. But improvement in working conditions, across the board, was achieved through union actions, and those improvements are being steadily removed by conservative governments at the urging of employers.

Some countries manage to find a far better balance and achieve lower levels of inequality than exists in Australia, without losing a democratic process.

There is really, IMHO, no doubt that the love of money is the root of all evil.

And many of those who measure themselves by the level of their wealth, heap scorn and disdain on those who have, by neither inheritance nor good fortune, been able to match them.

Clive Palmer is placed firmly in our sights, when we think of people whose undivided self-interest ignores the needs of others – and we are lumbered with the current Coalition government, courtesy of Palmer’s ill-gotten wealth!

Now he reminds me of AA Milne’s Kenneth Grahame’s **Toad of Toad Hall – and when that was written, cane toads were not Australian residents!

Two more year’s of misgovernment by Morrison and his cohort is a daunting prospect, but, short of a revolution (YES PLEASE! I’ll be in that!), we do have an opportunity to plan for the downfall of those whose only source of pleasure and security is derived from the economy.

I have seen many tweets recently from John Hewson – a small ‘l’ liberal and a decent man – and, but for the GST, we might have been enjoying a much more satisfactory approach to government than was engineered by Howard and Costello, once Paul Keating departed the scene.

We have an election in the NT on Saturday 22 August, 2020, and many have already voted.

Whoever wins, I shall continue my weekly Wednesday vigil outside the NT Parliament House, because Climate Change is not just a local issue, it is not even just a national issue – it is a global issue, and ignoring it will create a far worse burden for our great-grandchildren than will the COVID-19 debt!

And as for our First Nations – there are growing signs of progress, but we all need to be more aware of the need to properly recognise their right to genuine recognition in whatever forms they seek.

I end as always – this is my 2020 New Year Resolution:

“I will do everything in my power to enable Australia to be restored to responsible government.”

** Correction courtesy of a reader.

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4 comments

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  1. New England Cocky

    ”To state the bleeding obvious, those whom we elect to provide us with our laws and security, seem blind to all but those issues which relate to increasing wealth – and not necessarily for everyone!”

    Now Rosemary, living in dynamic Darwin you may not have recognised the southern myth that surrounding every metropolitan city is a zone where metropolitan persons rarely travel. This is called the Magic Circle of Development found just over the horizon of the flat earth where there be dragons lurking that will eat any unsuspecting passer-by by sucking them from the safety of their air-conditioned vehicles and tearing them limb from jowl before the eyes of their terrified progeny.

    So, knowing these dangers are real and perpetual and handed down from their progenitors, all politicians attending Parliaments in metropolitan cities are informed of this situation and strong-armed into voting only for pubic infrastructure spending in cities, where the people are.

    This means that 30% of the population living at great risk among the dragons on 90% of the national land area get 10% of the government public infra-structure spending to promote growing food & fibre to compensate the privileged metropolitan citizens living among the over-crowding, pollution and social problems for being unable or unwilling to provide their own food requirements.

    Only an optimist would think that things can be changed at the 2022 Federal elections.

  2. MrFlibble4747

    SCOBLIND: The inability to pick the obvious and best solution. Prevalent in Lib/Nat decision making.

    Rosemary wrote:

    ”To state the bleeding obvious, those whom we elect to provide us with our laws and security, seem BLIND to all but those issues which relate to increasing wealth – and not necessarily for everyone!”

    This blindness has been studied and has been described in a new Lancet article.

    The article identifies a condition they have name “ScoBlindness”, this condition is similar in effect to “Snow Blindness” but has far more impact on society.

    The main subject of study was our government with particular attention to our glorious and never-wrong PM.

    Sufferers have been found to be those WITHOUT the condition, those with the condition do very nicely, thank you very much, no suffering is apparent.

    ScoBlind people are not only unable to be swayed by the “Pub Test” they cannot SEE what Blind Freddy can see (even actual blind people are able to participate in both Pub and Freddy tests with good results).

    Where there is “NO Choice” correct decisions can be made (citing Cormann “What else could we do”), but where there is choice the ScoBlind unwaveringly pick the wrong solution! (The right solution benchmark was established by applying the fore-mentioned Pub and Blind Freddy tests to the available options.)

    There is no known cure or treatment, all research has been redirected to COVID-19 efforts.

    We are rooted!

  3. calculus witherspoon.

    No doubt, it has been really baffling, the lack of analysis involving Palmer and his latest pranks, not just throughout MSM but supposed alternate media.

    There was a reluctance after last election to account for his massive interference in it, with fault being laid instead at some sort mythical failing within Labor, that caused it to lose of its own accord.

    But who is Palmer?

    This almost fantastical, Trumpian figure, is he really the all-conquering titan he projects himself as? Given he was proclaiming himslef almost bankrupt at one stage, what explains his current supposed vast wealth?

    Or is he really just a cypher for other interests?

    Or, is his exclusion from WA politics more down to other players keeping him out of the mining provinces of WA?

    From this distance, his antic involving an iron ore field and his weird attempt to act as agent for foreign interests re this, seems to be part of a pattern of dishonesty redolent of something akin to treason and that this pattern has only ever been inimicable to the interests of Australia and Australians.

    He seems to represent the most odious, psychopathic tendencies of post industrial capitalism and it baffles me why even supposed ly progressive sites and journals seem to have avoided any serious analysis of what he and others are actually about in these uncertain times.

  4. calculus witherspoon.

    Chirping crickets.

    Looks like I’m the one that gets to switch off the lights..

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