Ways Forward

This is the view from Sydney Park in the evening; where we sometimes walk the dogs. I'm on the phone to Bill in Brisbane while the kids run ahead, the dogs, hopeless house dogs, already exhausted and heading towards the car. I've been deluged with a thousand things to do, worried about the lack of armour and resources to fight off any potential catastrophe, getting through the days and that's about all. Except that the days are much more organised than they once were; the financial drains nowhere near as catastrophic; the gathering storms disappearing back over the horizon.

Story after story pile upon each other. The climate change column is out; Hunting In Packs; masquerading as a rightwing columnist, it's great fun, I joked with the pseudo-editor, Trevor; and he arched an eyebrow, used to me by now, and asked: are you really masquerading? I laughed. The letter writers sure do take a lot of stirring up. The male version of Miranda Devine; without the audience. The turbulence of other people's lives pass through my own; the separated dad Murray Robertson who did a runner with his three kids for six weeks, acting as if his moment of notoriety might really change things, but it will do nothing of the kind.

Everything here in Australia is oriented towards the coming election. The budget's just been handed down; widely praised by the pundits as economically repsonsible. I basically get nothing, well $14 a week in tax cuts immediately chewed up by the extra taxes I pay on gas, electricity, petrol, food and everything else since Howard introduced the GST. The sight of these people, their self aggrandizement, as they grandly give away our money, just makes me puke. His latest is to give a $500 bonus to the elderly, for no reason. So we all work hard so these pricks can give away our money to others; so they can get themselves elected. It just makes me sick, the whole damn thing. We'd all be better off if they left us to manage our own money, but they just won't do that. Australia is virtually a communist country, so bound down are we with government regulation; most social activity proscribed in one way or another. It's now a crime to serve a drunk person in a pub; so not even the bars are havens of chaos and freedom and outrage anymore. We are a silenced, subdued people. And it shows. Just try walking down the street. Try being different. Try genuinely thinking outside the square.

We've produced whole generations of people who's minds run in ruts while the professional classes pick off their money as best they can. There are few originals, few creators; and barely a single soul less who can think for themselves. That was the country we fought and died for, our families, our pasts, their blank faces staring out bus windows; not just subdued, downright downtrodden.

THE BIGGER STORY:

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