On reflection, we can all probably recall incidents when, out of the blue, we have been put on the back foot by accusations made against us, often without basis. Our mind is sent reeling, as we try to make sense of what has been alleged. We are distracted from the thread of discussion and often from life.

Public Service distraction

One incident occurred while I was convening a major project for two government departments. As happens in the public service, leadership of the initiative had been transferred to another who tried to undermine the work. When I called a meeting with both leaders to clear the air and keep the project on track, it was confirmed the objectives jointly set were being met well. Out of the blue one of the leaders then accused me of being unkind to his PA. The accusation sent me reeling to find what could possibly be interpreted as unkindness to a person whom I had made particular effort to support, encourage and affirm.

It was all a lie of course. The PA in question was extremely distressed at having been used as a pawn in the public sector power game in order to regain supreme authority. Against my grain I could no longer afford to have anything to do with her. The leaders continued to undermine the project, which ended up being a major success, for which they took credit. Underlying their malevolence was the public service arse-covering technique of betting each way: success would be to their credit; a failure would be mine.

Family relationships distraction

When mutual humility and honesty would benefit, too often a relationship can be soured by false accusation aimed at asserting domination. “Isolate, humiliate, dominate” is the technique used maintain power over another, to win favour, assets and control, especially in dealings with the Family Court. Sins of youth raised to discolour the character of one party, judged under present norms, invariably shade character failings of the accuser. Family Court courtesans are willing parties in this dance of distraction for destruction – their careers and fortune depend on it.

Green distraction

Greens and Labor pride themselves on their environmental credentials enough to lord over others their moral superiority. Mostly Green policies involve demanding action imposing costs on someone else. Yet any sensible steps taken to ensure sustainability are never enough. Emotion rules, not fact. Emotion wins disciples, funds and publicity from a left wing media mouthpiece, regardless of the cost to others.

Brand morality assured, Greens and Labor are free to distract from the hollowness of their demands by destroying the value of the efforts of others. Who would know of the tremendous efforts farmers make to conserve their vegetation, soils, creeks and livelihoods when Greens and Labor forever damn them? Who would know about the funds, research and commercial efforts invested to conserve the integrity of the Great Barrier Reef, the poster icon for every global warming/climate change catastrophe claim? Who would know of the 200 year positive impact that cheap coal fired energy has had on creating prosperity, bringing billions of people out of poverty,?

Constant public disparagement of major positive efforts and outcomes distracts from malevolence of accusers. Under cover of the great climate scam, nothing less than de-industrialisation and the destruction of capitalism is sought by the Green acolytes, reordering of society as spelled out as utopia in The Great Reset by Charles Schwab, for a world to be run by unelected bureaucrats. Eliminating energy that has helped so much of the world out of poverty in favour of unreliable, unsustainable renewables is a distraction as we are taken back to poverty.

COP26 Glasgow

Every year around 25,000 emperors gather some place in the world to bolster confidence in their global warming nakedness like a Spencer Tunick photograph (picture), as they rail against the ordinary people trying to make a living. Glasgow was this year blessed with emissions from 400 private jets, as well as taxpayer funded flights, accommodation and entertainment.

Predictably, Australia was pilloried for not doing enough to change the climate or save the Great Barrier Reef, despite being one of only a few countries to meet our Kyoto carbon dioxide abatement commitments for 2030. Unjustly demanding more from Australia for this scam to show they are doing something (look over there!), distracts from their own destructive hypocrisy being exercised in the great global corruption and wealth transference scheme. 

Political distraction

With a federal election and Victorian and South Australian state elections due in the next twelve months, we can almost be assured of more of the “look over there” tactics that have proven successful in scaring people into voting one way or another. Take Labor’s 2016 “Mediscare” campaign, using unauthorised Medicare branding to claim the Coalition planned to abolish Medicare. That almost won Labor the election. Or cast a stern eye over the Greens’ constant loud, scary denigration of Coalition efforts to conserve the environment. Greens actually do little for the environment while pursuing destruction of the economy. Look over there! Their tactics work: we are always on the back foot. For change to occur we need to step boldly on the front foot to show a spotlight on the destructive ‘Green’ practices.

As election campaigning cranks up, it would be wise to cast a keen eye over any policies inciting fear. We know fear works. How else would so many have been so compliant over COVID lockdowns. Watch for lies. Dishonesty is inherent in any “look over there” tactics. Examine more closely the organisation making the claims.

China is the greatest proponent of “look over there” tactics, accusing Australia of warmongering, while it builds and equips the largest military on earth and illegally takes over the South China Sea, Tibet, LAC area of India, Hong Kong, and now threatens Taiwan. The tactic is the same disingenuous game, intended to stir fear, incite submission.

Power of Truth

Often I speak of truth/facts being the only basis on which we can move forward together. Truth is an essential component of my Maturity Model for decision making. Courage is needed to reveal truth: that is why lies roll so easily from the tongue of the malevolent. Social and financial disintegration ensues.

In a recent weekly column in The Australian, prominent international economist Henry Ergas wrote eloquently about lies:

Tacitius, one of Rome’s greatest historians, once wrote, unforgettably, that peoples are never more surely enslaved than by the lies of which they are themselves the authors.

With historical objectivity everywhere in retreat, today’s lies about the past can only fuel tomorrow’s nightmares.

Lies, often repeated, like Greens’ “look over there” tactics, become enslaving beliefs, unless tackled with truth and courage from a position of strength. Are we up for the challenge?

Whether in family, business or government, power and control over others can become addictive, to the detriment of all. Gaining power seeds the craving for more, unless countervailing influence can be brought to bear.

The Maturity Model for decision making outlined in my book Becoming provides a useful tool for assessing expectations, responsibilities and choice, in context, so we can take healthy power over our life and circumstances. The model shows that when expectations increase, responsibilities also increase and choice diminishes. After too long in such a situation, like COVID, both parties become immature and high social and financial costs are incurred. How true has that proven! In order to change, we have to take charge.

Power of COVID

This is precisely what happened under COVID. Fear, the political tool of choice, was engaged as short lockdowns became longer, curfews, masks, sanitation, isolation, vaccination, checking in, checking that we’ve checked in, education, sport and entertainment cancelled. No talking, playing outside, on the beach, sitting on a park bench, or even suggesting safe meetings, brought down police power on hapless citizens, charges and fines. Heartlessly, attendance at weddings, funerals, sick or dying family members was denied. Power beyond cruel and stupid! To keep us safe!

It’s taken almost two years for those so drunk on power that they couldn’t see what was evident early on – we will have to learn to live with COVID. Still the whiff of power proves too strong for Queensland Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk, who keeps the border closed to people from interstate and overseas until 90% vaccination is attained, now imposes vaccination mandates that costs the jobs of dedicated front line workers. Premier Daniel Andrews, dictator of the world’s longest lockdown in Victoria, seeks to extend his pandemic powers indefinitely, imposing fines of over $90K and two year prison for individual breaches of new arbitrary regulations, and $400K on businesses, without debate in parliament. Never enough! Misuse of insatiable power destroys democracy until such time as the people take charge. We are not afraid.

Power and destruction of climate catastrophism

I don’t thank the Greens for much, they have become such liars and deliberate economic illiterates symptomatic of Marxism. However, they did alert the world to take greater care for the planet. OK, we are alert and working on improving our environment with considerable success, mainly because economic achievement enables us to do so.

Unfortunately for the Greens, success is never enough. Ever increasing demands are for global gaia, including destruction of the means of production that made our economy viable, along with the wealthy people who contributed. Net zero by 2050, nobbling financial institutions from financing fossil fuel development on which most of the world runs, and destroying opportunities with green law fare, are all in their toolkit to take us back to burning dung for our dinner of grass and nuts. Am salivating! Can’t wait!

So many “leaders” gathered in Glasgow for COP26 to preen their green credentials and bolster confidence amidst the dawning realisation they are naked to a grand scam. Australia’s commitment to technological and sequestration solutions is at least anchored in practical reality. Otherwise, once more, the “Never Enough!” demands of Green’s climate catastrophism, suckers us not only to loss of democracy but also loss of sovereignty to unaccountable global bureaucrats whose power is never enough. We must speak up and take charge, not just clamour to board the subsidy and grants gravy train.

Power in education

All ideologues striving for long term power seek to capture children’s minds and souls on the way to fostering future acolytes. Classic Marxism! Often, by choice or chance, they have no children of their own, so seek life satisfaction influencing children of others. Education is no different.

All credit to those teachers who earnestly endeavour to foster in students competence in basic literacy and numeracy, while having to use a curriculum ideologically infected with age inappropriate propaganda on sex, race, gender, environment and colonialism. Who can believe the fictional tale of Aboriginal urbanisation, Dark Emu, by English ‘Aboriginal’ Bruce Pascoe, discredited by respected academics, is still being taught as fact throughout Australian schools and is heavily promoted on the ABC. Acceptance of 30% functional illiteracy and sliding international rankings by Unions and education bureaucracy is the result. Yet ever there are demands for more – whether ideological control over curriculum, funding, resources and smaller class sizes. Never enough! Ministers, parents and teachers must speak up and be heard if generations of children are not to be further disadvantaged.

Power in Unions

There was a time when unions served a useful purpose, winning better pay and improved working conditions for members, especially as operating conditions and technology changed. Unions became a collective force to counter the power of management. Yet as workers and management need each other in symbiosis in order to be productive, room for negotiation prevails. Breakdown occurs when either (or both) parties expect too much. Risk is the firm or industry will go out of business as outputs become too expensive to be attractive to management and end users. Unionists then lose their jobs. Unions for Australian car manufacturing workers certainly sent the whole industry out of business by their extravagant demands and continued expectation of government subsidies. Most people who bought one of the cars off the line had already paid for it in taxes. Never enough! Demand too much, end up with nothing.

The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) has undertaken a campaign of rolling strikes over 12 months compounding the impact of staff absenteeism from COVID. Industrial action to force container ships to wait up to 18 days to berth in Sydney, nine days in Melbourne, eight days in Brisbane and three in Freemantle, holding up delivery of Christmas stock desperately needed by stores who have been impacted by pandemic closures. According to the Financial Review, wharfies who in Sydney are paid an average of $172K on a 35-hour roster and work less than 200 days a year are understood to be striking for increased union control over manning levels and hiring. An offer of 2.5% a year pay rise for four years, no forced redundancies from automation and caps on casual labour apparently is not enough. Never enough!

The most egregious blot on unions’ copy book is their treasonous sabotage, theft and delays to troop supply ships, outlined in meticulous detail, in Hal Colebatch’s revelatory book, Australia’s Secret War: how unionists sabotaged our troops in World War II.

Power in family

Before we blame others we need to recognise that power can also be exercised inordinately in families: either by parents over children or vice versa. From experience we know that giving in to children’s demands leads to ever more demands, to the detriment of all. Clear boundaries become very important if we are not to create social monsters.

 Parents need to be mindful of their parenting style – whether for control, autonomy or complacency – as outlined in my book Becoming. Too much control for too long results in children without resilience, unable to think and act independently. Focus on autonomy allows development of the child as experience in choice is gained within safe boundaries appropriate to age and stage of the child. Complacency lacks sufficient discipline to foster growth towards the child’s potential.

World trends begin at home. Be mindful.

Analysis

Were we to take a step back to analyse the examples given, several things become evident. Firstly, there is no clear objective, which, if achieved, should result in a wave of satisfaction. Secondly, never is any gratitude expressed for efforts to attain goals: always the goal posts shift to extort more, like a spoiled brat. Thirdly, the selfish pursuit of own objectives deny consideration of others’.

To do our bit towards greater harmony at home and in the world we could: be more self-aware; take time to savour the satisfaction of having achieved goals; be grateful for the efforts of those around us; reconsider the necessity of asking for more; and, importantly, take charge and speak out when demands become outrageous.

In the adult inclination to greed and power, self-interest predominates, often imposing unnecessary suffering on children, robbing them of innocence, distorting their world view. As responsible adults, we are bound to moderate the impact, fortify resilience and offer children hope in a better future.

Becoming a family

The beauty of a new baby is wondrous in its perfection, inviting parents and others to love and nurture essential to its survival. All of life for a new baby stretches out in a joyful manifestation of hope.

How well parents respond to the call to nurture depends on how mature the parents have become. One who has transitioned from a single person who has addressed the tasks of young adulthood, to become a couple who care for each other, lends better to becoming a family able to nurture a new born. As cited in my book Becoming, “mutuality in enduring relationships moves from the independent “I am” towards the mutual “we are” outwards to “we care”.

In reality the birth of a new baby, establishing a family is a period of crisis and change during which many things can, and do, go wrong. Patience and love is needed to overcome the constancy of demands, changes of image and expectation, in order to transition to mature parenthood, laying the foundation for the child’s life. Much has been said about what parents do for the child. Much less is mentioned about the level of intimacy and maturity the child evokes in the parents and those who care for the child.

Those choosing not to have children may arise to positions of power affecting family, without ever having acquired the depth of understanding of intimacy and maturity possible when one processes the reality of becoming a family. We are then poorly served.

Parents

Most parents struggle through the demands of work, family, lockdowns and education demands to do a good enough job of helping their children grow up to be productive, responsible adults by age 18, in keeping with the law. All strength to them for establishing a sound platform for the child’s life and prospects! Children so blessed should be forever grateful for the privilege.

In one way or another, many fail the maturity challenge, unable to provide the necessary level of care and support. The child and its future are betrayed by parental self-interest.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, each year, around 3% of all children aged 0–17 are assisted by Australia’s child protection systems. Some children are unable to live safely at home as they risk being abused or neglected, or their parents are unable to provide adequate care. Support services try to keep children with their families, or alternatively pursue placement in out-of-home care, such as with a relative or foster carer.

One in 32 children received child protection services in 2019-2020. 67% of children receiving child protection services were repeat clients—that is, the children had previously been involved with the child protection system. Emotional abuse (54%) was the most common type of abuse or neglect substantiated through investigations in 2019–20. This was followed by neglect (22%), physical abuse (14%), and sexual abuse (9%). The number of children in out of home care rose by 7% between 30 June 2017 and 30 June 2020 (from 43,100 to 46,000).

Statistics show the true suffering of children resulting from parental immaturity and inadequacy. Suffering compounds over time due to multiple systemic failures, not the least of which is the Family Court.

Also demonstrated by statistics is the strong cohort of parents trying to do their best, who don’t attract the attention of protection services.

Family Court

Under Family Court law, the interests of children are supposed to be paramount in deliberations. Yet destructive weaponising of children by one immature party of the broken relationship against the other for advantage, is too often compounded by processes and courtesans of the Court, whose career and financial ambitions crush children’s future social and financial prospects. Complicating, delaying and drawing out resolution consume resources that could readily be committed to support children of the fractured family. The system could be simplified, with reduced options for the recalcitrant.

Education

A sound education is commonly understood as an opportunity for disadvantaged children to overcome the hurdle of parental dysfunction, prepare for employment and avoid imprisonment. Tacit acceptance of 30% functional illiteracy and innumeracy shows limitations of the education system to service a child’s preparedness for adulthood.

Literacy involves ‘students listening to, reading, viewing, speaking, writing and creating oral, print, visual and digital texts, and using and modifying language for different purposes in a range of contexts’ (ACARA 2019a).

A former classmate of mine who was a State Ward at the bottom of the class, for years was able to write me a message on a card at Christmas. The hand writing might have been a bit shaky, yet the message was legible and coherent. Today, the observation a healthy, bright ten year old with loving supportive parents unable to write a proper sentence with appropriate spelling, parts of speech, capitals and punctuation written legibly, fails to motivate any correction for improvement from the teacher.

Under the current teaching it seems all that is required is for certain elements of curriculum to be presented for learning by certain stages, before moving on, without confirming uptake. Easy for children to fall through the cracks. Compulsory incorporation of environmental, gender, racial and feminist propaganda into every element of learning seems to have become more important than a child’s ability to absorb literacy and build on it to become a functioning adult.

Yet it is well known that many students who cannot read proficiently by the end of 4^th grade are likely to drop out of school and end up in jail or on welfare. Girls are more likely to end up having children out of wedlock and live below the poverty line. Cost to the healthcare sector of illiteracy is immeasurable.

Never before has so much been spent on education to produce such parlous outcomes, current generations performing lower than previous generations. Blame abounds all round: poor parenting; teachers trading indoctrination for education; capture of curriculum by the Left in Education bureaucracies and Teachers’ Unions, each weaponising their power over (other people’s) vulnerable children to achieve political ends, classic Communist manifesto. All the while, the primary purpose of education goes begging, affecting us all, whether in the disempowerment by illiteracy or indoctrination on gender, climate catastrophe or diversity.

Paedophiles and Porn

Nothing destroys a child’s innocence and normal progression to productive adulthood more than sexual abuse, sexual exploitation and pornography. When perpetrated by family members or people of authority, the very sense of trust in community is destroyed as well as the child’s sense of self. Uncontrolled selfish adult sexual predation imposes a lifetime burden upon a child, beyond its capacity to bear. Often the cycle of abuse continues, as victims of sexual abuse in turn become offenders. Pure evil!

Evil thrives in company. Organisations exist whose members openly advocate adult sex with children, posing psycho-sexual arguments about ‘age of consent’ laws and prevailing social attitudes. Roeburne in Western Australia experienced a paedophile epidemic of such high incidence that child sex abuse was seen as “normal”. Police charged 36 men with over 300 offences against 184 children. Child abuse tourism to developing countries and deep web portrayal of sexual abuse of children trawls the depth of disgust. Suffer little children!

We are sexual as well as social beings. Ever there has been pornography in one form or another, to entertain, inform or excite. Yet lunch time porn on smart phones must surely distort any child’s growth to healthy sexual maturity and social relationships with peers. Craven images of sexual subjugation are not reflective of healthy relationships. Again adult greed and power imposes suffering on unwitting children, amplified by educational messages confusing gender identity, denying biology, promoting irreversible sexual change. Suffer, indeed!!

Climate Catastrophe

Encouraging children to dispose of their Macca’s wrappers properly or turn off their smart phones for a time could affect greater benefit to the environment than all the hyperventilating orchestrated upon and by children about ever-failing predictions of climate catastrophe. Longitudinally, CC is proving a great global wealth transfer, affecting de-growth of western economies in favour of (more) corrupt ‘developing’ countries to help them deal with the scam. Marx couldn’t have programmed it better – yet another form of indoctrination to capture the hearts and minds of children.

COVID-19

Just when you think it couldn’t get worse for children’s education, school was closed during COVID lockdowns. Students have been left languishing with the vagaries of online lessons, without social contact or sport, even deprived of fresh air to shoot a few hoops in the park – for almost two years in Victoria. Deference has been demanded to the might and power of people in authority rather than reliance on facts. No wonder child mental health issues have soared.

Greed and power of adults once more manifests in the mandates to mask, vaccinate children, isolate and distance, when facts show that children are less likely to contract the virus and if they do, it will be low intensity. Shutting down all the children to protect the vulnerable very elderly is very flawed policy. Failure to acknowledge natural immunity from having survived the virus is yet another nod to the greed and power of Big Pharma, already benefiting from $billions in profits, as pressure rises to vaccinate all children.

Resilience and survival

Every era has its challenges. As post-war kids roaming free-range through the bush, across local farms, swimming in the best water holes, boiling the billy and feeding off wild mangoes, guava, gooseberries and raspberries, we learned resilience and initiative that helped survival through broken relationships and poverty, though not achievement of full potential. Learning to read and write well probably saved us.

Challenges for today’s children, though manifest, will no doubt be confronted with customary youthful energy and resilience that will enable them to survive, if not thrive, fulfilling the limitless potential and hope of their birth. How they respond matters, rather than what happens.

• 

• 

Our lives are mere blips in history: insignificant in the overall scheme of things. Yet as we try to deal with the daily struggle to survive and thrive, we hope and trust it may be meaningful; that it has not been for nothing and we will be remembered more fondly than notoriously. Maybe not up in memorable lights for all of posterity like recent Olympians, or famous painters whose extraordinary works appear at GOMA in the exhibition of European Masters, yet memorable still to those near and dear to us. We will have made a mark in our life amongst those we love. Whether they love us in return is another matter.

Who knows how life pans out? And does it matter? For one, I relish wisdom from the ages. Old and New Testaments are sources of much wisdom as relevant today as a couple of thousand years ago. Another very old tattered book I value is 100 Great Thinkers, which presents the lives, thoughts and aspirations of outstanding men of philosophy, religion, economics and political theory – from the Babylonian law-giver Hammurabi to the more contemporary existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. An occasional woman is mentioned (I did say the book is very old). Contributions of each man are discussed within the social and philosophic framework of the time in a broad survey of man’s attempt to understand himself and his universe. Just what we are trying to do now in this era of COVID constraints.

Building on wisdom of history

While reading the potted history of these famous people a few interesting impressions emerged. Firstly, each made their mark in wisdom and leadership, often in very difficult times like the present, building upon the knowledge and wisdom of those who preceded them in history. Memorable philosophies were built on the gifted legacy foundation of knowledge to which they added greater insight pertinent to the particular era in which they lived.

Secondly, almost invariably, generativity and generosity of spirit pervades their philosophy. Like us, they made their mark seeking to leave the world a better place, richer in understanding.

An exception is Karl Marx (1818-1883). From his privileged origins in middle class wealth and university learning, Marx was the first to integrate, in masterly theses, the fields of history, economics and sociology, to create ‘scientific socialism’. Misery and poverty of workers, Marx believed, would be overcome by the destruction of capitalism and its wealthy owners.  

We have since learned that destruction of any operating state, system, family and faith does not guarantee the glorious equality of outcome envisaged. Marx underestimated industrialists’ capacity to grow and change in societies based on Judeo-Christian ethics of freedom of individuals, known to elicit free speech, initiative and enterprise. Industrialisation brought billions of people out of poverty. Wealthy capitalists became managers of shareholdings rather than owners, bound to cede better pay and conditions for their workers.

In countries where Marx’s philosophies took root, destructive revolutions led to brutal dictatorial rule, starvation, imprisonment, torture and death that continue today. Thought and speech are monitored and controlled. Equality of misery is assured. Just ask the people of Cuba, Venezuela, survivors of Pol Pot in Myanmar, Hungary, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Russia, North Korea and China.

Lessons for today

History shows that destruction of a flawed system does not guarantee it will be replaced with the perfect one envisaged, however well intended, as has often been repeated in the history of communism. People value liberty. Holding onto lessons of history and wisdom from the ages that inspire our health, wellbeing, family and faith is crucial to contesting threats to freedom and benefits our forebears have won so dearly.

Yet today, from the top of the Mazlow hierarchy where many of our needs, even toilet paper, can readily be met, we need to be alert to the Marxist revolution simmering to destroy all that has been so hard won. Note the slow, deliberate erosion of our institutions through the promulgation of lies, deceptions, untruths and misrepresentation, evident in:

• The Great Reset of capitalism promoted by the elites making their mark on the world, in the Green New Deal, the great wealth transference scam, threatening us to pay up or risk catastrophe, years/decades/centuries in the future. All promises, like Communism, have proven false. Yet the Marxist goal of de-industrialisation and destruction of capitalism is rapidly being realised through this very propaganda.
• Extinction Rebellion seeking to make their mark in the world by staining our buildings, deriding our history, preventing the congress of ideas and industry. ER should be stopped in their tracks to feel the full force of the law, at least as much as a pensioner walking in the sun during lockdown or a pregnant woman in her kitchen.
• Politicians and bureaucrats from their ever expanding fiefdoms and increasing pay, who’ve made their mark in daily press conferences promoting their propensity to destroy businesses by arbitrary lockdowns for a virus we will have to learn to live with. At the same time restricting the communion of families and faith, weddings and funerals. Get the drift? Family and faith fragmented.
• Educators who’ve traded education for indoctrination, making their mark on other people’s children, betraying their profession and destroying children’s opportunities for literacy and numeracy. A curriculum stacked with climate change propaganda, gender fluidity, evils of colonialism (never the benefits) and race baiting ensures life options for their captives are limited and depressing.
• Media social activists, no longer journalists, making their mark as key influencers on TV, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, to the empire of the ever offended, undermining truth and resilience. Add activist judges and doctors.
• Military leaders who’ve made their mark failing responsibilities. Who’d send a sociologist to investigate battlefield behaviours, demoralise veterans, and undermine the morale of serving personnel – at least those who haven’t painted their pinky with nail polish? Their real job is to produce force and equipment battle ready, seeing as how we are likely to need it soon the way China is posturing. Didn’t that woke?
• Corporate oligarchs, not satisfied with being the richest men on the planet, tend to think they are also the smartest. Like all great communist leaders, they make their mark on the world by controlling what we can hear, see, learn, think and do. On the inclination of an algorithm seeded with misinformation, they can change the course of opinions, elections and history. We can be cancelled, disappeared. How mighty are these feudal lords! How base we plebs! Time for a reality check!
• Financiers who Velcro their reputation to the woke green agenda by choosing not to finance any fossil fuel projects like coal mines or power stations essential to providing base load power and revenue for health, education and their electric car frolic. In effect, these fools open the market wide to more honest and intelligent investors interested in servicing manufacturing, jobs and energy to the people, especially the poor of this country. What a mark to make!

Making our Olympian Marx

We are ever enriched by traditions, modified, not discarded. Even the Olympics which so enthralled me over a COVID lockdown, are steeped in history, legend and mythology, from which today’s traditions are drawn. For 12 centuries between 8^th C BC to 4^th C AD, games were held every four years. Circuses are ever important. Modern Olympics resumed in 1896. Symbolism of the lighting of the torch continues, though no longer lit by parabolic mirror and sunrays as at the ancient temple of Hera in Greece.

The modern Pentathlon incorporates skills needed by an ideal Greek cavalry soldier of the era operating behind enemy lines: swimming, equestrian, fencing, pistol shooting and cross country running. Even the marathon stems from the run by Pheidippides from the town of Marathon to Athens, a distance of around 40K, to carry a message of Greek victory.

History and tradition enhance the significance of making a mark winning Olympic honours. Our mark may not be made in winning an Olympic medal, but in supporting and celebrating those who do. At the same time, every bit as remarkable, is living with respect for others and gratitude to those imperfect people who’ve gone before us. Initiative my orphaned grandfather showed escaping from a Dr Barnardo’s home in London when 11 years old, working his way on a ship to Australia, is alive and well in enterprise driven by his descendants today.

We can use the wisdom of discernment to speak out strongly against those gods of the new religions, the new self-appointed lords of our universe who seek to destroy, in order to control, in the best Marxist tradition, rather than adapt the traditions that have brought us to this privileged state. We can claim responsibility for our children, without relinquishing their minds to savage indoctrination and the cocaine high of online capture. If we can do that we will have made our mark.

The further from main purpose, the more stupid and detrimental policies become, not just in COVID, but also in environment, defence, education and health. Furthermore, hard won tax payer dollars invested in stupidity driven by political advantage fund increasing numbers of public servants to control we the people, whether we like it or not, in a giant make-work scheme.

Older persons’ friend

We are all going to die. Pneumonia has long been known as the old person’s friend for hastening the end of life. Better that than languishing in extremely diminished condition or in the increasing oblivion of dementia. Given that on average we live 30-40 years longer than our forebears did merely a little over a century ago, a healthy attitude would find us making the most of additional time of life. Many do. Good grace accepts the inevitable. Be sad. Be grateful.

As known early in 2020, COVID mainly affects the very elderly, especially those with co-morbidities: obesity, heart conditions, diabetes and the immune compromised (the medical miracles). Like pneumonia, COVID can bring a swift, if unpleasant, end to suffering. Even so, peak stupid failed to protect the elderly adequately with quarantine and staff controls. Yet the average age of deaths was 82 years. Sad, yes, but inevitable. Every life passed should be mourned.

At the same time, the same peak stupid locked up everyone else repeatedly for weeks and months, disrupting and destroying businesses, jobs, livelihoods, education, families, travel, vacations and the simple pleasure of walking in the sun in the open air. Except for politicians and public servants who increased in number and remuneration like amoeba, while so many others went to the wall.

“Flattening the curve” to prepare hospitals and PPE for anticipated numbers of infected that failed to materialise, morphed into seemingly endless, erratic lockdowns and unpredictable openings. Politicians hid behind Chief Health Officers daily to milk whatever political advantage was to be had from sticking up for “their” State, saving “their” people. Oh please! Spare us! Political advantage masking peak stupid!

Nothing will change until we people rebel against the loss of freedoms deferring to central socialist control for indiscernible benefit.

Note: I am in the “at risk” elderly category, am vaccinated, wash my hands, wear a mask and have duly, if unwillingly, abided by government diktats.

Climate catastrophe

The thirty year evolution of the global climate catastrophe industry of wealth transference is perhaps the ultimate “naked emperor” of peak stupid in the current era. And it is pursued without shame! Trillions of dollars invested in this farce have ignited enthusiasm faster than a 100mw/m bushfire and as uncontrollable. Posturing Europeans now seek to impose restrictions on imports from countries not abiding by (their) standards of CO2 reductions. Global financiers withhold funding for development unless climate obligations are met.

My own early experience of the (then) Australian Greenhouse office began in 2000 when the AGO was seeking to go full renewables. At the time I was working with a scientist to reduce fuel costs and emissions from coal fired power. That push for renewables was an impossible farce evident from the beginning. So it has proven peak stupid, based on emotions, failed forecasts, facts ignored and faith in the new gods seriously misplaced. Not to mention the opportunity costs of demolition of base load power, failure to allow construction of new power stations, disallowance of nuclear energy development, all contributing to the loss of manufacturing capability and production, weakening this country immeasurably for no benefit. Green lies have made us vulnerable.

Take failed forecasts by such eminent persons who’ve cashed in on the scam, including, but not limited to: Tim Flannery, John Kerry, Prince Charles, the IPCC, Greta Thunberg and Bob Brown. Collectively, with the regular catastrophists, their predictions of the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, sinking of Pacific Islands, the death of polar bears, loss of glaciers and polar ice have all failed! Repeatedly! It is beyond peak stupid that we remain under capture to this folly, politically and financially.

Facts are ignored in this catastrophe frolic, regardless how thrilling impassioned fear may be. My lay understanding is that presence in the atmosphere of the big bogey man (can I say man?) of essential plant food CO2 is a mere 4%, of which 3% is estimated to be human induced. Australia’s contribution is said to be 1.3% of the 3%, which equals 0.00039. Use your calculator to check it yourself. Given the facts, why are we chasing down the wombat hole of unsustainable renewables, which still rely on despised mining to produce, and which destroy the ecology, while presenting the yet unresolved problem of how to recycle or dispose as they pass their use by date all too soon. Peak stupid indeed!

A double vaccination of facts and common sense (with a back bone booster) would see new HELE coal fired power stations built around Australia (as is happening at speed around the world using our coal), nuclear energy approved, and the Iron Boomerang project built. Iron in the Pilbara would link with coalfields of central Queensland, manufacturing steel both ends for export instead of importing from China.

Doing so would lift our vision from fear to aspiration, even excitement. Surely better than the stupidity of trying to stop cows from farting.

Defence

Peak stupid is spending defence budget on political pursuits rather than national protection. Nevertheless, shoring up Christopher Pyne’s seat in South Australia took precedence over the country’s need for an early, ready, suitable, affordable submarine fleet. Pyne was gone from politics before the submarine project was launched. All we’ve reaped is an over-sized Chinese embassy within touch of submarine operations. Injecting pragmatism, Australia needs to revisit the submarine contract now shamefully over cost and interminably delayed. In the meantime, two Chinese warships hover on the Great Barrier Reef just outside our economic zone monitoring joint military exercises.

Education or Indoctrination

Protecting children by keeping them locked down, out of school without face-to-face learning, social contact, sport or activity has had a very damaging impact on child wellbeing, not to mention our education standards already in decline internationally. All the time it has been well known that children are less likely to be affected by COVID, yet lockdowns, masks and sanitising have continued the theatre of alarmism, even with vaccination.

Notwithstanding declining standards, education unions and bureaucrats seek infiltration of literacy and numeracy learning with indoctrination with falsehoods on gender fluidity, colonisation, critical race theory and climate catastrophe. Peak stupid! Unless, of course, these policies are a deliberate part of the broader elitist socialist strategy, capturing children’s minds on the way to destruction of family, faith and freedom I noted permeating over 40 years ago.

Evidence from the petri dish of communist experiments show poverty, brutal control, imprisonment, torture, starvation and death awaits socialist enthusiasts, as people in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Russia and China will attest. Yeonmi Park, who escaped North Korea, describes in detail just how brutal life is in that country in her book In Order to Live. But don’t let facts get in the way of emotional thrall of a peak stupid indoctrination message. Only a double jab sand blasting injection of facts and good sense can cure. “Liberdad!” (Freedom!) is the cry from long  suffering Cubans.

Peak stupid pervades

Peak stupid raises destructive force everywhere, to weaken us educationally, economically and defensively: in the purge of history, books and statues of western civilisation; in capture by activist socialist media; in inflated bureaucracies at home and internationally seeking control of our lives, where and how we live, eat, learn and play; in academia constraining free speech with cancel culture deferring to China; in the tech oligarchs, who, like so many uber-wealthy people, believe they are smarter than we are and should control what we hear or see, and tell us what to believe. How dumb is that!

Our future depends on being aware of the risks and marshalling the courage to take the cure: vaccination with facts and common sense.

It’s hard to get away with lying, though some appear to do so. In the short term being dishonest may bring advantage. Eventually though, there will be a reckoning which may have more impact on our life than had we been honest in the first place.

While being honest takes courage, it can be a short cut to a brighter future in the long run, allowing us to move forward without looking over our shoulder. We can be more at peace, more productive.

Yet, despite knowing in our hearts that it is best to be honest, wisdom about honesty echoing down the ages is being dismissed by the regressives (who cannot be called progressives as everything they spout is regressive). Foundation documents like the bible are being discredited, history and literature cancelled, statues and heroes torn down, children indoctrinated with patent lies of critical race theory, gender fluidity and climate catastrophe.

Wisdom Disdained

Honesty can be uncomfortable. As Winston Churchill once said, “The truth can be shockingly inconvenient. Ignorance can deride it, panic may resent it, malice may destroy it, but there it is”. We must deal with it. We must deal with it or face a reckoning.

From the forgotten Ten Commandments of scripture, we are exhorted “not to bear false witness against our neighbour”. Yet so easily does reputation destroying slander slip from our tongues and our keyboards, we should expect it, because whether we are chaste as ice or pure as driven snow, we will not escape calumny.

Renowned psychologist Jordan Peterson, author of the best-selling book 12 Rules for Life, advises us to Tell the truth – or at least, don’t lie”, as “It will keep your soul from withering and dying while you encounter the inevitable tragedy of life”. Seeking the truth, Peterson believes, can allay the terrible desire to seek vengeance for tragedy.

Against persons

In the reality show of the media and the Family Court (and other Courts), daily we see prism of malice identified by Churchill and vengeance of Peterson’s insight played out to destroy people by lying to meet a particular agenda.

• A wife, after 20 years of peaceable marriage to a former champion boxer, painted him as a violent abuser when she went off on a frolic with a lesbian lover (it was his fault).  Through the prisms of malice and vengeance the ex-wife gained bulk of the goods, yet lost the love and respect of her sons and former husband.
• Potential future Prime Minister Christian Porter was outed as a rapist of a student debating colleague 33 years earlier by their ABC journalists, though police investigations had not proceeded. The Court enforced settlement against the ABC did not pursue the malice of intent to destroy Porter’s reputation and career in the process of weakening the government. A small reckoning was attained in the loss of reputation of the journalist and the communications giant.
• After six challenging tours of Afghanistan, VC winner Ben Roberts-Smith has been forced to confront yet another enemy at home. Accusations of war crimes and domestic violence have been cast against him in the media, costing his reputation and career. Ben is suing for defamation and damages. We are yet to see how this case plays out, though the claim of jealousy for his bravery award seems to have seeded malice and vengeance in the lives of accusers.
• Twenty year much awarded veteran Navy Seal, Eddie Gallagher, faced a similar experience in the USA. Eddie’s fight for his country’s freedom turned into a fight for his own freedom at home, as he, like Ben, was accused of war crimes. In true warrior spirit, Eddie endured a long process upholding his truth and 9.5 months in jail to win acquittal and freedom. His inspiring journey is outlined in a book The Man in the Arena, co-authored with his wife, Andrea Gallagher.
• An appeal to the High Court ultimately determined Cardinal George Pell innocent of charges of molesting two altar boys decades earlier. Pell had already spent 400 days in jail following conviction in lower courts. Vengeance against Catholic Church failure to reign in sexual abuse of children seems to be the prism through which media and Victorian police canvassed for lifetime potential offences by Pell, who was the most senior Australian catholic. Public conviction of Pell through the media drew condemnation from the courts.
• Biden’s climate tsar, John Kerry’s 2006 book and documentary An Inconvenient Truth, made him rich and famous. Scientific inaccuracies and predictions of global climate catastrophe that failed to emerge have been discredited in Michael Moore’s 2019 documentary Planet of Humans, as well as by countless scientific studies since. Yet Kerry’s predictions (lies) continue as part of the climate propaganda in education and policy globally (status, money, power).
• Countless allegations against former US President Trump have been safely debunked, since the main objective of removing him from the White House has been achieved (political power, vengeance and money). Reckoning is still coming for the tech giants who admit to suppression and cancelling. Like the main stream media, the techies admit to conspiracy with the Democratic Party. Since Trump’s departure CNN has faced a reckoning in the loss of 76% of its audience.

Little attention is paid to the enormous cost of lying: $trillions invested in useless “un/renewable” energy schemes; millions died because the never-Trump media trashed Trump for issues since proven true:

• Closing the border to China;
• Suggesting hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were suitable therapies for early stage COVID-19;
• Vaccines could be produced within a year;
• Strict border control is a security measure;
• 3-year Russian collusion investigation was a sham to run diversion from Hillary Clinton’s illegal destruction of emails;
• Pandemic was manufactured in a lab in Wuhan China;
• Three impeachment attempts were baseless.

 Reckoning for the Left is being realised by the people daily in the gross ineptitude of Trump’s successors, Biden and Harris. Lives have been lost unnecessarily, property and livelihoods destroyed and costs escalate inestimably as China flexes its muscle over Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific countries including ours.

Where responsibilities lie

Each of us has responsibility for honouring the truth promoting our values of individual freedom, faith and family so much under attack by the regressive Left. We can support, tangibly with donations or with our voice, those who dare to carry the banner of our beliefs. Otherwise the day of reckoning will come for us in the loss of freedom we treasure.

Main stream media (MSM), especially the ABC, has much to answer for. The hard work of journalism researching and reporting the news has become largely social activism, reporting opinions and unverified stories, many palpably untrue to a discerning viewer. Once cadet journalists came up through the ranks, learning on the job. Today would-be Watergate stars are products of learning from lefties in academia rather than through the ranks. Reckoning is coming in the guise of costly major law suits, loss of revenue from loss of patronage and decline in respect and credibility.

Ever the filters or prisms through which people judge issues affect the story. As Stephen Covey advises in his book The Speed of Trust, the reckoning for dishonesty is the loss of trust that can readily bring down governments, organisations and families. Don’t let it be us.

Title of this blog is from a quote by Ronald Reagan, 40^th President of the United States. In full, Reagan’s truism reads,  “To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last, but eat you he will”.

Reagan lived his belief. By confronting the crocodile of Communist aggression, Reagan, with Margaret Thatcher then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, brought down the Berlin Wall leading to the ‘opening’ of Russia, seeding years of relative peace in the world.

Conversely, appeasement of Adolf Hitler by Neville Chamberlain (British Prime Minister 1937 to 1940) merely fed the crocodile. By signing the Munich Agreement in 1938 relinquishing a region of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, Chamberlain hoped to stave off another war. Hitler was emboldened, as was Emperor Hirohito of Japan. Devastating World War II ensued, the deadliest military conflict in history, in which an estimated 70-85 million people perished.

Chamberlain’s decision was understandably a considered softer option intended to protect his country, still not fully recovered from World War I, with military materiel unprepared for another war. Yet it failed catastrophically. The crocodile still bit.

Since then those familiar with history, having learned from such a graphic example, believe in peace through strength.

Today lessons of history are being readily discarded as big business prioritises self-interest, pandering to China to reap extraordinary profits accessing that market, even speaking CCP lines to justify their position. Clive Hamilton combines meticulous research with compelling prose to expose precisely this insidious Chinese methodology in his book Hidden Hand (with Mareike Ohlberg). Yet smart global leaders, never believing democratic freedoms and national sovereignty may be gobbled, feed the crocodile of Xi’s China Dream that rains contempt on the global rules based law in pursuit of world domination.

Fattening the crocodile

I know! I know! None of this has anything to do with us, puddling along in glorious oblivion, anxiously hoarding more toilet paper with every recurring lockdown. Yet each of us has been seriously affected by China’s conscious export to the world of COVID-19, with its accompanying illness, death and economy destroying consequences. Blaming Trump or Scomo is hardly a sensible response: the communist China crocodile has been fattening for decades. The crocodile is coming for us, not the cavalry. Each of us needs to step up and speak up before it is too late.

Having failed in the hot war, communist sympathisers sought power by infiltrating and undermining western democratic institutions. In this they are increasingly successful: policies infecting the universities, education, unions, bureaucracies, arts and media dominate public discourse. Central control of the populace, restrictions on freedom of speech and faith and fragmentation of family have become passé, while falsehoods are promoted with moral certitude.

Seeds of the march through the institutions troubled me early in the eighties when involved in the women’s movement. Marxist feminists backed by Victorian Education unions urged policies that challenged the nuclear family. Women who boasted a number of abortions sought control of other people’s children (and still do) through “values free” education. Their success has graduated from abortion for 14 year olds without parental support, to gender fluidity, pornography, denial of biological reality of male and female, mother, father and breast feeding, in concert with political indoctrination on climate change and critical race theory. Contempt for western civilization and the Judeo-Christian values that brought us to this free and prosperous state are part of their ticket.

George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 has become a manual for governance. Big Brother slogans: War is peace, Freedom is slavery and Ignorance is strength are becoming a reality as history and individuals are cancelled (vaporised), and facts are replaced with Newspeak. Presciently, Orwell writes, “By 2050 all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed”. Sounds all too familiar!

Confronting the crocodile

As Orwell reflects through protagonist Winston, Hope lay with the Proles (proletariat, the deplorables, the Quiet Australians in Newspeak) rather than the elites who dominate. Yet, “Until they become conscious, they will never rebel and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”

If we value what Australia has achieved, it is up to us to take a stand or two against the crocodile of dishonest regression if we wish to preserve our free, democratic society for our children and grandchildren. My own response was to develop the Maturity Model and publish the book Becoming specifically as tools to help ordinary people make sound decisions meeting the emerging challenge to traditional conservative values as society becomes more diverse.

“Tank man” who stood with his plastic shopping bags before a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square 32 years ago was a prole who rebelled. We do not know his name or his fate: he was probably vaporised, along with thousands of others who protested for democracy in China at the time and since. Yet his stand against oppression has become a symbol of courage in the face of adversity.

Psychology professor Jordan Peterson, author of several books including 12 Rules for Life: an Antidote for Chaos became globally renowned for making a stand against Canada’s intention to criminalise the misuse of personal pronouns, stalling the crocodile. Peterson objected to limitations on free speech as an early step towards the dystopian totalitarianism of China, and as outlined in Orwell’s 1984. Peterson’s writings and interviews have assuaged the confusion of many, especially young men confounded by overt contempt for ‘privileged white males’, who fought wars on our behalf and to whom we owe our freedom.

Former PM Tony Abbott shirt-fronted the crocodile of the callous people smuggling trade by stopping the boats and the tragic deaths of illegal immigrants emboldened to pay to risk their lives on the high seas to get to Australia. To do so, he had to withstand the legal and political onslaught of conspicuous compassion invoking kindness, yet which causes endless downstream costs, tragedy and harm, fuelling false hope.

Wrestling our crocodile

Take for instance Kara who defied family and friends advice to go on supporting her drug addicted young adult son, who had exhausted family energy and funds, stealing to feed the habit. Kara confronted the crocodile, decided to let the law take its course. Her son ended up in jail. On release, having gained a job, a partner and a family, her son said sending him to jail was the best thing she could have done.

Then there is Joanna working in a large, very busy enterprise dominated by the mood and behaviours of a crazy maker. Even senior staff seemed under capture to the crazy maker’s damaging antics. Joanna confronted the crocodile, took the matter directly to the manager and demanded action in the interests of office harmony and productivity. Appeasement was not an option.

Individual and group initiative necessary to confront our specific crocodiles needs courage that will be hard to produce in a society that has institutionalised cowardice. Nevertheless we can provide tangible and personal support for those who bear the burden of challenge to our way of life and values on our behalf. In Australia, that may mean getting on board with the cavalry coming to save us: people like Andrew Hastie, Senators Amanda Stoker and Matt Canavan, the Institute of Public Affairs and others of your choice. It may also mean refraining from trolling heroes like VC winner Ben Roberts-Smith who put his life on the line on our behalf countless times.

Look to it!

Mindlessly cluttering our lives

When I was young we had as a neighbour an elderly bachelor called Bill who collected and stored paper, mostly unpaid for. Newspapers piled ceiling high with only a narrow pathway through, stacks of that awful shiny government toilet paper filled a bed and a stash of one dollar bills (pre-coin days) were heaped on the kitchen table. Tea and conversation with mum fortified Bill for the races he loved and supplied him with our newspaper for the form, which no doubt went to top up his stack.

The image of Bill recalled seems as laughable a caricature today, as then. Yet many of us, like Bill, accumulate visible and virtual things over time, unaware, as was Bill, of the inhibition to our evolution as people to the hoard of tightly held possessions, forever restricted to a narrow, hazardous track.

Recent COVID behaviours show that Bill’s propensity to hoard toilet paper isn’t so uncommon, however irrational: we have only one backside. There was a time of scarcity when some of that newspaper could be used for the same purpose – reused in best environmental practice, as were many things that were repaired, reshaped and reused for practical reasons. That was before cheap Chinese goods with short life spans flooded the market and the Greens held us under capture.

Vacuum Law of space and attraction

Getting rid of stuff is liberating (after the challenge). Ask anyone who has down-sized or moved house. Have done it myself: positioning a large skip under the balcony and tipping years of life, work and items into it. Only one or two things were ultimately missed. More recently environmental, in concert with a philosophy to keep everything circulating, furniture, books, clothing and equipment were boxed. Strong, polite young men from 1800gotjunk loaded it all onto a truck to take to a centre for recycling to charities. Only what would be useful in the next stage of life made it to the new, smaller place, with size appropriate furniture.

A wonderful space opened up to create the next phase of life. We come into life with little and certainly can’t take it with us. Under the vacuum law of space and attraction, it is hard to grow on until we create the space by letting go of things no longer relevant. A real ascetism, holiness, ensues in doing so.

Inability to let go can create hazards – health, accident, aesthetic or environmental. Little point in holding onto obsolete machinery, white goods, equipment or clothing. Best to take good care of goods, repairing to extend usefulness and lifecycle, before disposing properly, immediately the item becomes non-functioning. Collections of dead refrigerators, washing machines, tools, furniture and equipment are clear indicators of a cluttered mind in the cemetery of ideas.

Clothing, shoes and accessories are an obsession for some who take joy in shopping for things they may never wear. Charity stores provide a wonderful opportunity to recycle accumulated wardrobe items, which become welcome finds for the less fortunate and bargain seekers. While creating space in one’s own life, we can practice environmentalism and support worthy causes at the same time as creating welcome space in our own lives.

Letting go of people

As we are naturally social beings, letting go of toxic people and relationships can be every bit as challenging, especially if we are related and feel compelled to love them. Going along with people, enduring their negativity, may seem easier at the time, though is unlikely to end well. Applying my Maturity Model, both parties become less mature, resulting in fragmentation of individuals at high social and economic costs. Often such toxic relationships prevent development of more beneficial relationships with others. Plenty have complained about the grumpy, sullen or aggressive family member that inhibits friendships and dialogue, causing discomfort, robbing joy.

In addition to physical and psychological risks to person, there remains a very high opportunity cost of staying in an unsatisfactory job or relationship. Whatever benefits appear to accrue from staying put need to be weighed against the wonders of development that stand to flourish once free to be oneself. Life is short. We pass this way but once. Do it today. For yourself.

Troubled family relationships and situations are fraught. If tied to kin, perhaps it is best not to go as often or stay as long, limiting exposure. Same applies to friends who pass into our lives for a time before moving on as friendship sours.

Be mindful, too, of capture by eternal victims who generate serial crises for attention, consuming time, money and energy to no good effect. Wisdom of discernment resolves that it is best for us to be measured in any response, conscious always of attending to our own needs and capacities before sacrificing all where little good can come. Shake their dust from our sandals and move on.

Realism dealing constructively with flawed relationships and moving on is sound practice for later years when options for doing so may be taken out of our hands. Friends and family members succumb to issues of health, accident and ageing, passing on from this life, whether we like it or not. Without preparation, we will not be ready to absorb the shock of loss and change, potentially missing out on valuable future growth.

Similarly, failure to make conscious decisions or take assertive action in a timely manner can result in those decisions being taken out of our hands abruptly, in a way that shakes the foundation of our sense of self. What we most ignore can become the very thing that claims us.

Letting go of things, relationships and people over time is practice for the ultimate letting go as we prepare for our own end.

Letting go of daily detritus

Excellence is the commitment to completion is a quote from self-help author and philosopher Bob Proctor. I live by this quote. It is the ultimate environmental guide, although Proctor’s advice preceded environmentalism.

Translated into everyday use, it means such simple things that enhance life: completing tasks thoroughly and promptly; putting away the groceries instead of leaving them on the kitchen bench; getting rid of waste and disposing properly of packaging as it arises; finishing off the laundry and putting it away; and following through on discipline of children promised. Once completed, each of the said activities frees our minds and bodies for more satisfying pursuits that enhance life.

For businesses, political parties and workers, the same applies: do the job properly, otherwise it can cost health and lives (as we’ve seen through COVID); dispose of unworkable policies and practices cluttering a strategy (such as the Labor’s anti-coal climate change policy that has cost them government); and forego unrealistic demands on workers that cause fragmentation, lowering productivity.

Above all, enjoy the liberation and virtue gained by letting go.

The main reason it’s unwise to believe the Greens is that they lie. As evidence, examine Greens’ policies and pronouncements for their tug on emotion to win supporters, rather than reliance on facts. Condemnation rains from an assumed position of moral superiority

Having won the war to raise awareness about caring for the planet, Greens have no plan for having attained success. Like any good idea taken too far, environmental activism has become extreme, dishonest and destructive. From chaining themselves to trees and blockading mining and development sites, inner city Greens have moved upmarket to pressuring banks, corporations and superannuation funds to prevent projects being financed, denying opportunities, jobs and taxes that fund essential services, even environmental services.

Invariably Greens’ policies capture the agenda on emotion, cranking up fear and concern: the world will end in (x) years from global warming; the Great Barrier Reef will be destroyed; Pacific Islands will be under water, dams will never fill again, frequency and intensity of cyclones and bushfires will increase due to global warming. All proven false!

At a basic level just how dishonest are the Greens was brought home to me while handing out how-to-vote flyers during a federal election. A schoolteacher, a Greens member standing in front of a wonderful poster of a turtle on the Great Barrier Reef, was denouncing the Adani mine because of the damage the mine would do to the GBR, as well as contribute to the global warming catastrophe.

People love turtles and don’t want to see them harmed. Seeking to do the right thing, they respond at an emotional level to what is presented as a moral, virtuous choice promising personal satisfaction and conspicuous virtue signalling by voting Green.

Green lies about the Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is a real global heart tugger. On a plane travelling from London to Rome I found myself allaying concerns of the scientist in the seat next to me. He had come from a conference where premature destruction of the GBR was a pre-eminent topic of discussion. The scientist had no idea of the scale or geography of the reef.

My hope was that the activist teacher handing out how-to-vote flyers was not in charge of geography or social studies. Factually, we know that geographically the Adani mine is 400km from the coast, with another 100km to the reef, which is kilometres wide in parts. Furthermore the 3,000 reefs stretch around 2,400km long, crossing many degrees of latitude and temperature, from Lady Elliot Island off Bundaberg in the south, to Torres Strait north of Australia, rendering claims of bleaching from “warming” irrelevant. Science shows amazing resilience of the reef to recover from cyclical bleaching events.

Nor does agricultural run-off have a major long term negative impact on the reef as Greens claimed for years, influencing agricultural policy. Professor Peter Ridd denounced previously touted claims demonising farmers for runoff. Farmers have bent over backwards to improve farming practices and foster riparian vegetation to slow farm impact on waterways. Ridd’s study found only 3% of inner reef was temporarily affected by runoff after flood events, and then only on the inner reefs. The Green Shirts movement of ethical farmers has begun to fight back against Greens’ lies to defend their right to produce.

Greens’ lies about Bushfires

Cyclically various parts of Australia are damaged by bushfires, which Greens now claim are increasing in frequency and intensity because mining fossil fuels for electricity hasn’t been shut down to prevent global warming. Never mind the facts that bushfires have been a part of Australian ecology forever.

Aborigines traditionally cool burned undergrowth to conserve their food sources, 183 arson charges have been issued in relation to the 2020 fires, punitive fines have prevented farmers from widening fire breaks to protect their properties and governments at all levels have failed to clear undergrowth in National Parks and state property in keeping with best practice recommendations of previous Royal Commissions into catastrophic fires.

As mentioned in an earlier blog Confidence of the hunt, two old blokes with 100 years forestry and bushfire management experience explained, forests here differ from northern hemisphere forests in that in Australia trees shed leaves and bark which build up. Drought dries out the fuel burden. Normal fuel build up is one ton per hectare per year. Double that and the fire risk rates four times higher; double again and it becomes 16 times, and so on. A fire in a 50 ton/hectare burden cannot be stopped. As the Aborigines before them knew, hazard reduction burns work.

Under normal bush fire conditions, a fire burns at 3 megawatts per metre. During Black Saturday, fires reached 70 mw/m.  Fire intensity of 100 mw/m and fuel loads have never been higher as a result of a 30 year build up. At that intensity, heat is so great it is impossible to withstand.

Greens claim to support hazard reduction and backburning to reduce the impact of bushfires, guided by scientific expertise. Yet under pressure from Greens, government regulation preventing any vegetation removal, combined with 183 arson charges, was far more damaging in the 2020 bushfires than fake claims of global warming.

Facts, even about an issue as relevant to Australia as the cause of bushfires, don’t fit the Greens’ emotional narrative. Their lies perpetuate.

Greens’ lies about renewables

At first glance, renewable energy seems like a good idea worth exploring and possibly introducing, ostensibly to replace fossil fuel generated reliable energy using coal or gas. Fossil fuels have been demonised as destroying the planet raising CO2 levels, causing global warming. Never mind that CO2 comprises less than 4% of the global atmosphere and is an essential plant food pumped into greenhouses to accelerate plant growth. Scary stuff if we care for our children’s future. Scary for children if they believe Greens pundits that they will fry and die all too soon. See them weep in the streets and dare us to action from global platforms! Strong moral and emotional motivation for taking up renewables!

Yet on any reasonable factual environmental or business analysis renewables fail:

• Inputs require extensive despised mining – hundreds of tons of concrete, steel, nickel and lithium for each windmill; materials for solar panels and batteries
• Relatively short life span: deteriorating in effectiveness after 10 years
• No known way of recycling materials once defunct; US$200k to dispose of just one windmill which must be buried in landfill.
• Extensive area for solar and wind farms destroys environmental aesthetics and ecology; causes inescapable noise pollution
• Uncompetitive without taxpayer subsidies, paid by disadvantaging the poorest people with higher energy prices
• Incur significant transmission loss at great expense because of long distance from remote locations to grid/use; uneven supply disrupts flow to the grid
•  Unreliable when sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow
• Increased energy prices for renewables have forced early retirement of reliable coal-fired power and manufacturing, at enormous cost to the country’s productive manufacturing and business base.

Forever chasing down the Greens’ CO2 induced global warming rabbit hole defies facts. The world is has warmed less than one degree since 1900, despite claims the science is settled and the Bureau of Meteorology fudging historical records to influence the narrative. Climate is always changing, largely dependent upon solar activity rather than the mere 3% of human induced CO2 (of 4%) essential plant food. What I learned from the Royal Tyrrell paleontological museum outside Drumheller in Alberta, Canada, was that we are in a late ice age. The museum holds marvellous dinosaur exhibits exposed as glaciers recede, having formerly covered all of northern America.

Industrialisation that brought hundreds of millions out of poverty and starvation using coal fired power, has responded by improving efficiencies with HELE plants’ lower emissions, now being built in countries around the world using our coal. Not here, though, because finance is not possible. Pious virtue signalling from government, spineless banks and investor groups refuse funding under ever threatening social media activists. Adani’s efforts to extend benefits of cheap energy to 300 million of India’s poor without electricity were stymied by delays over nine years from Queensland’s Labor government under Green law fare. Poor Indians dying from respiratory illness and COVID are no doubtful grateful to the Greens for holding back progress in their short, difficult lives.

Meantime scientific experts are questioning the warming claims: Chief Scientist Alan Finkel said no matter what we do it won’t make any difference; Professor Ian Plimar has written books on the falsehoods; former climate alarmist Michael Schellenberger has revised his position in a book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, in which he accuses climate activists of misleading the public and contends that policy solutions such as green energy are making matters worse. Former Obama physicist Steve Koonin’s book Unsettled debunks claims that surging sea levels are inundating the coasts, hurricanes and tornadoes are becoming fiercer and more frequent and climate change will be an economic disaster.

Greens’ lies about intentions

Despite their glossy rainforest and GBR posters, Australian Greens’ policy platform is no longer about environmental issues. Watermelon Greens have boarded the climate crisis gravy train of the global Great Reset and the Green New Deal. Red shines through. Aim is for a socialist utopia of cradle to grave care by big government funded by taxes on our 122 billionaires, “to turn around growing inequality and the climate crisis, to fight for our future”.

Greens’ push for a socialist agenda demonstrates a lack of understanding of history and business. In spite of grandiose Marxist promises, like the Greens’ fantasy, recent history shows great failures of Marxism costing the terror and death of 100 million people. Is that what you sign up for? Green folly compounds in pursuit of the unsustainable, unaffordable, unattainable (100% renewables) in response to the unprovable (human induced global warming).

Lack of business nous is evident in the absence of a lifecycle business case for ‘renewables’, including mining, manufacture, transport, establishment and maintenance, disposal, subsidies and opportunity cost. Wouldn’t pass muster in a small business application to the local bank, but seems justification for a global scam. We are left to wonder how global elites have captured the agenda and the gravy train of global funding redistribution, except, as in all socialist states, elites benefit grandly from the moralistic emotional coercion of Greens’ lies and manipulation.

Neither is there any understanding of business and capitalism in Greens’ fantastical “tax the billionaires” strategy, allegedly because the billionaires are heavily government subsidised and pay no tax. We know from experience that taxing billionaires in reality means taxing us all – in higher prices and subsidies for green initiatives. For people who have forever lived on the public teat, never risked all to start a business, never put their hand in their pocket to pay a worker, how could Greens possibly understand entrepreneurship, innovation and having a crack, as demonstrated daily by individuals starting business in a competitive environment?

Billionaires Kerry Stokes, Gina Rhinehart, Twiggy Forrest and Clive Palmer haven’t always had their own capitalist way: they have had to endure the vicissitudes of the marketplace to be where they are today. Fifteen years ago a guy started a business from a garage.  That business is now valued at $5billion. The company provides health services around the country and the world, leading in research and treatment, enhancing the lives of tens of thousands of people. In practical terms, what part of this person, business and ingenuity would the Greens clip in their objective of attaining equality? Think about it!

Telling the truth

One of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life relevant to the Greens’ policy positions, “Tell the truth – or, at least don’t lie”. Though difficult to attain, Peterson believes our lives benefit from being honest. At least we never have to look backwards. The Maturity Model described in my book Becoming specifically requires truth/facts as the basis for making sound decisions that we can live with. The alternative is fragmentation of individuals and groups at great social and financial cost.

It would be wise, therefore, to examine closely the policies of the Greens, who use misinformation and manipulation coercively to win support and influence on emotional and moral, rather than factual bases. No doubt you want to do the “right” thing, so be aware. On analysis, Greens’ policies have moved beyond environment to socialist objectives using the vehicle of orchestrated climate crisis.

Value your money and your vote. If, as the Greens claim, a change (of only) 828 votes is needed for Greens to hold balance of power, to be in a stronger position to kick the Liberals out, to tackle inequality and the climate change emergency, then it’s incumbent on us to look beyond the new environmental morality of Green gods to the facts of policy appeals.

We can do our bit environmentally and sensibly by following another of Jordan Peterson’s rules: Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. Dispose of rubbish promptly and appropriately; reuse and recycle; don’t waste; plant trees; reduce farting by pensioners and cows; don’t travel. Oh wait! COVID solved the last advice.

Otherwise bloated socialist bureaucracies will reach ever further into our lives to dictate where and how we can live, what we can eat, learn, say, think, do. Almost there!