The Voice: plenty of talk, not many listening.

Principles for Major Decisions

The coming referendum on the Voice is a major decision for each of us that has the potential to change the culture of equality and procedural fairness in Australia. When voting on the referendum to change the Constitution, each of us needs to consider responsibly the merits and implications of the Voice.

My Maturity Model for decision making was designed to help people become confident in making decisions important in their lives when the consequences of decisions must be lived with. The referendum on the Voice is one such critical point in time. Results factored into our Constitution will have to be lived with.

Elements of my Maturity Model balance choice, responsibility and expectation to maintain harmony. Once expectations increase, responsibilities increase commensurately, and choice diminishes. Such a situation is unsustainable, resulting in fragmentation of individuals and groups, leading to immense social and financial costs. All predictable.

Measured against my Maturity Model, the Voice has the potential for distortion of equality accepted by all. Anyone claiming to be aboriginal will have additional power over choices that affect us, at a time when eleven aboriginal representatives have been elected to stand in federal parliament alongside all others.

Defining the Problem

In Business 101, the first task is to define the problem before seeking and proposing a solution. We should be asking for what problem is the Voice a solution? Will the Voice solve the problem? And how?

According to proponents of the Voice, “Closing the Gap” is the intended purpose of going to a referendum to change the Constitution to give Aborigines special recognition, and it seems, special governance power.

Efforts to close the gap life metrics between aboriginal and others have now been ongoing since 2008. A lot of money, effort, good will and consultation has been invested to advance the wellbeing of Aborigines. Progress has been achieved in some areas yet remain stalled in others. Education and incarceration rates remain fraught. Outcomes in both are linked. Low educational achievement tends to result in poor health outcomes, unemployment and incarceration.

If ‘closing the gap’ is the problem, what difference will the Voice make that has not been achieved already after 14 years concentrated effort? Just as importantly, will a change in the Constitution recognising the importance of Aborigines as original inhabitants satisfy aboriginal demands going forward? Already moves are afoot to change place names for aboriginal ones, generate treaties and claim reparations. Seems there is no end to expectations. Remember using the MM, increased expectations from Aborigines means increased responsibilities and costs for us, along with diminished choice – not sustainable.

Inevitably Australia would have been settled by a foreign power; thankfully it just happened to be the British who brought universal equality in law and language. Over the last 50 years, despite innumerable special days acknowledging Aborigines, culture, apologies, flags, welcome to country, acknowledgement of elders at every session of every event, special indigenous sporting events, festivals, their radio and TV, equality in law and $33billion invested annually, racism is claimed at every turn. People of goodwill become weary when there is no end to demands.

The Voice demanding to be heard may find people of goodwill weary of listening to victimhood, racism, blame and guilt. Australians just want to move forward together.

Context and Facts

Without an understanding of context, poor decisions will inevitably be made. Rarely are facts allowed to get in the way of a political concept like the Voice.

Facts providing context for the Voice are not limited to:

• 120 years ago, lifespan for Aborigines and whites were roughly the same – around 48-50 years
• In the intervening years improvements in health, education and sanitation have extended by around 30 years the lifespan for most of the population, including 75% of Aborigines integrated into the wider community. Difficulties in attaining uptake in health, education and sanitation means 25% Aborigines on homelands now lag whites, despite extraordinary efforts and investment to ‘close the gap’. Unacknowledged is the 20-year increase in lifespan for Aborigines already attained through respectful efforts by people of goodwill.
• Infant mortality and morbidity were also similar between races. Again, concentrated extraordinary efforts have improved metrics for all, though not quite as much for Aborigines. Furthermore, parental alcohol consumption during pregnancy has resulted in too many aboriginal babies born with FASD (foetal alcohol syndrome disorder), condemned to a life of poor learning, intransigent behavioural problems and crime affecting themselves and everyone in the community.
• Education: it has only been since Labor Science Minister Barry Jones encouraged higher education in the 80’s that more students continued to Year 12 and University. Opportunities for aboriginal students are not so far behind so long as they engage in elementary education, an aboriginal community responsibility.
• Aboriginal culture and economy defined anthropologically by nomadism, have not done well when confined to western style housing on homelands. Sanitation and health suffer when historical nomads remain stationary. Overcrowding and alcohol disrupt social order. Violence and sexual abuse compound dysfunction. Aboriginal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price from Alice Springs believes that changing the Constitution will not address the scourge of alcohol, sexual and physical violence and low education attendance demoralising remote communities.
• Storage, non-existent in nomadic culture, is difficult to inculcate in a traditionally nomadic culture that essentially consumed available resources on the day.
• In his book Whiteman’s dream(for aboriginal self-determination) Gary John’s believes that progress has been hindered by findings of the three major enquiries over 30 years that fostered aboriginal victimhood: Deaths in custody, Stolen generation and Hindmarsh Island. No claim has been proven. Yet ensuing policies continuing the disproven narrative have fostered victimhood, depriving Aborigines of responsibility for determining their future, loading whites with bottomless guilt, shame, racism and demands for reparation. Ultimately Aborigines must pick up their bed and walk, or else call an uber.

Walpiri/Celtic woman Price seeks real solutions for indigenous people that will help all Australians, echoed by Johns’ insights and solutions have little relevance to the Voice:

Land rights, welfare and culture have locked Aborigines out of the good life. Land has become a burden, welfare has become disabling, bad behaviour is mistaken for culture. There is a way out. Aborigines must abide by the same rules as every other Australian — seek out opportunities, study hard, and free themselves from a culture of bad behaviour. 

The way to go

As changes to the Constitution have major ongoing legal implications for us all, it’s best if we identify the problem to be solved by the Voice and determine whether the solution offered in a “Voice” is the way to go.

A lot of people are talking, few are listening.     

Alfredo Ortiz’s provocative new book, The Real Race Revolutionaries, provides genuine options based on facts. Oriz explores the debate contested between two African American thought leaders a hundred years ago. WEB Du Bois argued that activism and political power were the best pathway to racial equality and that capitalism was inherently racist. In the interim political activism has embedded racial division. Whereas Booker T Washington believed black Americans should harness the power of capitalism to become economically independent, pursuing an agenda of education, industry, thrift and ownership. Ortiz details black entrepreneurs who have been successful in building businesses, employing their peers.

Former tennis champion Yvonne Goolagong’s workshops for aboriginal entrepreneurship seem to be on the right track. My white woman’s dream is for teams of aboriginal tradies to rove remote communities affecting repairs and maintenance of properties, local aboriginal run bakeries and cafes to thrive, butcher shops and community gardens producing vegetables. At least such a dream, in concert with Booker Washington’s inspired idea, would be much better than the nightmare of violence, alcohol and racism inherent in the Voice.

Acceptance and forgiveness are the greatest gifts for Christmas.

Christmas traditions derive from the very beginning with the birth of Christ – travelling long distances to be with people we love, bringing gifts as did the wise men from the East. Family members will often cross the country or the globe to be with those special to them at Christmas time.

Repeated in families of every kind are welcome festivities with lashings of special foods, exchanging gifts thoughtfully made or purchased. Other traditions like the evergreen tree decorated with promising fruit, topped by the star shining the way to new life envisioned, symbolically for the new baby, in fact for us all. Peace, new hope, replenishment and restoration fill the air with the sounds of music inspired by deep spiritual significance of the occasion, whether believers or not, in the original true spirit of inclusivity.

Achieving Christmas Harmony

Bringing a lot of people together for a short time can result in a measure of disharmony, as people assert themselves, unaccustomed cordially to accommodating different points of view. Then there are those who sit back and expect to be waited on, contributing nothing to the bonhomie of the occasion. Others can be outright aggressive, unwilling to put aside differences for a day out of respect for the hosts and those who have contributed much to the occasion.

In Paul Theroux’s novel Motherland, the seven adult siblings, even as they aged, consistently resorted to patterned childhood behaviours when getting together for a family gathering. Never did they seem to grow on or grow up. The inevitable result was friction, unpleasantness and blow-ups, at the very time when rejoicing and gratitude were warranted. Don’t let this happen to your Christmas celebrations.

In recognition of the reality of how fraught family gatherings can be, a local radio station has been offering callers the opportunity to assist with peace negotiations to help ensure such a special occasion this Christmas generates the harmony intended. Now that’s a practical idea!

Christian churches offer peace at Christmas. We share gifts in love. Rule 12 of the Fourteen Teachings of Buddha invokes: The greatest gift in life is acceptance and forgiveness, two priceless and costless gifts, crucial to peace and harmony at any time, and especially at Christmas.

Acceptance and forgiveness can be hard to come by in families fractured by hurt, real or perceived, judged by today’s standards against what happened (or not) decades ago, stories of woundedness cultivated in self-pity, so practiced that they’re hard to let go of to grasp the hope and promise of renewal inherent in the season. As the statement from the Royal palace enunciated regarding Harry and Meghan’s claims of racism, recollections may vary.

Yet forgiveness may be hard to muster for those who have been subjected to vicious and unwarranted hatred and vitriol from those who they loved. Isolation and humiliation as means of domination are unworthy of the simple Buddhist invocation to acceptance of people where they are at, whatever their condition.

Acceptance of Self

Few of us lend to the magnanimity of the Abdallah family who lost three children and a cousin in an Oatlands tragedy. A group of cousins innocently walking to the shop for an ice cream were hit and four were killed by a drunk, drugged driver. Though grief stricken, this deeply Christian family accepted the reality of the tragedy, absorbed their grief in faith and forgave the perpetrator. This could not have been easy.

On the anniversary of the children’s death, the family launched ‘I4giveDay’, encouraging others to forgiveness in the interests of peace and harmony. Life is short. Why make it more unpleasant than the daily life struggle faced by us all? In doing so the Abdallahs spared themselves years of self-consuming hatred, resentment and desire for revenge, none of which was likely to bring peace or satiate their grief.

Oh! That we could marshal the Abdallah spirit this Christmas! Begin by acknowledging our own grief and hurt, mourning our losses. Then, by allowing acceptance of ourselves, we can forgive ourselves and forgive others who have hurt us, for they know not what they do, even if what they do has been deliberate.

We matter most. None of us is perfect. Over a long life, flaws can percolate and break through to hurt others. Unlike religious cults of environment, race, gender and colonialism now dominating the nation’s agenda, it’s okay to acknowledge faults, make reparation and seek forgiveness. We can also forgive others.

Taking a cue from the Buddhists, acceptance and forgiveness, beginning with ourselves, are the greatest gifts we can give and receive this Christmas. Extended to others, the spirit miraculously conjures up the warmth, love, peace on earth to people of good will so long promised.

A very happy Christmas to you all. Blessings!

It’s more offensive to name what is wrong than do wrong. (Paula Collins)

Over the last couple of years George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, seems to have come into its own as a manual for governance. Prols of the novel (people like us) could not think, ask or speak for themselves or their experience: they had to obey unquestioningly the narrative put out by Big Brother who watched constantly. Sounds familiar to recent experience of COVID and climate change.

As global tensions between autocracies and democracies play out to determine the better form of running a country, autocracy (Big Brother) seems to be creeping ahead as most favoured by leaders. Left leaning media largely fails in its job of calling government to account, having aligned themselves with Big Tech and Big Corporations in holding power with government of the day, influencing rather than enquiring.

Courage to question or voice an alternative point of view can end up costing legal process, reputation, job, career, house and friends, cancelled from social media and disparaged as a disrupter. Pregnant Zoe-Lee Buhler found out how damaging speaking up can be when she was handcuffed in her lounge room in front of her children and partner when charged with incitement merely for posting a lockdown protest meeting on Facebook. Trolls on social media piled on criticism of her.

In the USA people who had the gall to support Trump or hold pro-choice views have been raided by the FBI, arrested in front of their families, their electronic devices confiscated. A Canadian café owner was shut down, charged and bank accounts seized for donating coffee to truckers protesting vaccination mandates.

Conversely, second biggest donor to the Democrat campaign, FTX Cryptocurrency operator, Sam Bankman-Fried remains free, swanning polyamorously in the Bahamas, while people lose their life savings in the US$40billion collapse of his scam. His saving grace? Effective altruism, using promotion of accepted woke narratives to escape scrutiny.

Weaponising the police against dissenters is just so “Big Brother”, breaching as it does the separation of powers between governing and legal arms of administration, undermining institutions of democracy. It is also a function of fascism and communism.

After a big news splash, public humiliation and extortionate costs, all too often these politically motivated actions fizzle to nothing once political advantage has been secured. Still the point has been made: ask questions and speak out and you will be punished.

Firm and Family controls

If you think Big Brother controls exist only in government, you are wrong. In many families and firms, similar autocracy prevails. The boss or some other crazy maker can be forever “herding” workers into compliance with their diktats, allowing no other point of view. Work becomes particularly unpleasant and unsatisfying. Bureaucracies in big firms and public service are infamous for it. Compliance with the rule of the day prevails, though emphasis and orders may change. Rather than put up with it, long sufferers leave for greener options, unfortunately taking with them the chance of organisational renewal. In his book Beyond Order Jordan Peterson details the psychological distress of a client under capture to a crazy maker and how, with counselling and support for a new direction, alleviation and escape were attained.

In families things can be little different. Traditionally older parents exerted stern controls over children and others. Since Dr Spock’s book Baby and Child Care popularised child-centred care, respect and power in families and community have inverted. Indulged children are negotiated with rather than disciplined. Now it’s parents and elderly who are more likely to run the gamut of disapproval, cowed into silence for daring to question or speak their piece, forever walking on eggshells for fear of offending. A dominant sibling can assert similar inordinate power. Positive progress stalls when discussion is stymied. Ostracism once metered out to children for poor behaviour is shamelessly foisted onto elders for existing and having a point of view. Options for alleviation and escape for them are limited, though not exhausted.

Effects of power and control

Controlling the narrative to exert power and control over others has multiple effects:

• Responsibility is foisted on those less able to bear it as expectations increase and tolerance of dissent declines. Fragmentation of individuals and groups invariably occurs, with high social and financial costs.
• Naked emperor syndrome, as no one is allowed to say the narrative is baseless, because of the effect it would have over prevailing power and control of the populace. Sham is ultimately exposed. (Think COVID mandates without a scientific base and treatments refuted).
• Unsustainable, autocratic power has a lifecycle unrenewed through evolution, ends up consuming itself, even though many suffer till the end (think North Korea, CCP, Daniel Andrews).
• Truth has a way of emerging, eventually, as Orwell’s character reflects, “They can make you say anything – anything – but they can’t make you believe it.” (p192)

Autocrats rob individuals of responsibility and choice. For those pursuing forever infantilism over maturity, living or working under tyrannical rule may suit. Never will they be held responsible for what happens, sad though it is to encounter one late in life who clings to child-like ignorance.

On cult like issues orchestrating mass fear such as Climate Change and Covid mandates, the irresponsible, cloaked in the virtue of compliance with the narrative, assume virtuous, dogmatic judgement on those daring to raise an alternative position or failing to comply.

When people are silenced and herded into compliance, democracy which has been honed by freedom of speech and respectful debate loses out to autocracy.

Personal solutions

Most of us are powerless to influence change on a national or international scale unless we band together with other like-minded individuals. We are best able to exert positive influence our own lives (hard enough) and perhaps ripple out to others within our sphere of influence.

The Maturity Model for decision-making outlined in my book Becoming emphasises individual responsibility and management of expectations in making confident choices one can live with. Jordan Peterson also focuses on responsibility for taking charge over one’s life, no matter how unsatisfactory things may be. Responsibility (rather than blame) is the way to maturity and wholeness as a person.

To reduce fear, deal in facts, not fantasy of the doomsday cults. Cultivate a sense of humour and gratitude for what we have. Enjoy the present. Celebrate the wonders of innovation that solves so many of the world’s problems. Support those who carry heavy loads. Be kind.

Where relationships are intractable, take Jesus’ advice, “Shake their dust from your sandals and move on.” Or don’t go as often or stay as long.

As former PM Malcolm Fraser said, Life wasn’t mean to be easy. Asking questions and speaking out aren’t easy either, as so many have found out. Yet context is critical. Satisfy yourself your contribution has value in the overall scheme of life. Ask and speak up.  

Nobody and nothing is perfect. Yet many who’ve grown wealthy risking and taking initiative, stepping up, working hard to win, can be dismissive of the value intelligence of others not so financially blessed, especially in matters affecting their own lives.

We’re every ready to applaud achievements of the wealthy, especially when benefits accrue to the population at large.

Perhaps like me, you’ve been looked down on as stupid because you haven’t attained the same grand wealth of those who’ve reached the pinnacle, joined the club of global elites to bask in mutual congratulatory warmth, well above the fray. With a little humility, other factors like timing, good luck and personal supports could be recognised as contributing to success, not just their own efforts.

It’s worth having a look at what a few wealthy people have done with their excess money, over and above attending to essentials.

In Australia

Australia has a handful of people who’ve grown wealthy on the back of digging up minerals for export, primarily to satisfy China’s insatiable demand. Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, sponsors Olympic swimmers and rowers to encourage them to do their best. Others don the God complex to save the country and the world from Climate Change, the taxpayer subsidised scam.

Twiggy Forrest seems an affable sort of guy who has been particularly generous in supporting Indigenous training, employment and business development. His business and charitable pursuits have been lauded at home and abroad. So much so he’s been able to grease a smooth path through the corridors of global power to push his green hydrogen initiative tapping nobly into the ‘renewables’ gravy train as a glorious saviour of the planet.

Twiggy claims $A9.2 billion investment over four years will complete decarbonisation of the company’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030.

Hydrogen’s natural abundance and carbon-free combustibility have made it the holy grail of clean fuels for decades. But while it is the most common element in the universe, it is highly unstable, and left to its own devices always bonds to other elements. Getting hold of it in its pure, useful form is labour- and resource-intensive and expensive, especially if you want to do it with zero emissions.

Forrest faces at least three huge cost challenges: making hydrogen cheaply using renewably-generated electricity; storing it cheaply and safely; and exporting it. The challenge is to make green hydrogen cheaper to produce, store and transport than key competitor fuels or energy stores, such as coking coal, natural gas and lithium-ion batteries.

Whereas traditionally scientists would develop a test model to prove the technology before expanding into production, Twiggy is going the whole hog straight up. Taxpayers struggling to get over COVID to build or rent a home will be expected to subsidise yet another unproven CC frolic.

Nobody is perfect.

Simon Holmes a Court directed the power of his inherited wealth to political interests and “renewables”’, funding a dozen or so Teal candidates to run against Coalition candidates pushing the CC agenda. Not only were candidates to unseat his adversaries, they would push through parliament extreme “renewables” policies to benefit his green investments. Holmes a Court used a female front to save the country and the world. How noble!

International

George Soros, an Hungarian who escaped to London in 1944, made his $billions as an investor buying and selling English pounds, to break the Bank of England. Through $32 billion invested in his Open Society Foundations he has funded such worthy causes as academic scholarships to South Africans under apartheid and students from Eastern bloc countries to develop broader thinking of different governance systems.

More recently, funding has been directed at undermining the legal integrity of governance in the USA.  By funding 300 left wing Attorneys General who introduced no cash bail practices that allows thefts, injury and murders to be waved through the courts, keeps criminals out of prison. No consideration is afforded the victims. As a result, tax-paying residents are inconvenienced as shops and large chain retail outlets close in these Sanctuary Cities. Crime, homelessness and drugs have increased inordinately, making living there unsafe and unpleasant.

At time of writing Soros’ foundation is funding legal action on behalf of the 50 illegal immigrants that Governor Ron de Santis of Florida flew to the exclusive compound of Martha’s Vineyard to highlight the difficult plight of Border States dealing with President Biden’s open borders policy.

Bill Gates: One would think that a person of over $100 billion wealth and much awarded globally for both his technological development in computing and charitable endeavours of the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation financing the dissemination of life saving vaccines around the world, would give pause and thanks. Yet success and awards tend to feed omnipotence.

Not satisfied with granting the world with computing technology at our cost, Bill joined the Great Reset of the WEF (World Economic Forum) bringing green socialism to the world, where we’ll own nothing and be happy. The irony of denying to plebs the very capitalist system that facilitated Gates’ vast fortune is not lost on me, even though it will be deemed honourable, saving the planet.

Gates’ idle capital has recently been active in pursuits that will affect us mightily:

• Tracking our behaviours by embedded chips, to be controlled by whom? Him? On some CCP socialist credit system, as promoted at the WEF in Davos;
• Promoting insects and artificial food as suitable nutrition instead of meat, deemed contributing to CC;
• Investing in media and communications such as the BBC to control the narrative. Having a vaccine-injured support group silenced on social media is beyond unconscionable;
•  Buying up vast tracts of productive land that will affect food security.

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame, like his counterpart Jack Dorsey of Twitter, has also applied his wealth by exercising influence into the political arena beyond his original success. Each sought to change the balance of the 2020 USA election by banning President Trump from their carriage services. Zuckerberg also now admits to conspiring with the FBI to hide the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop holding evidence of the Biden family’s corruption. Exposure would have changed the voting pattern of many who favoured Democrats. Algorithms filtered, cancelled and banned any who posed a view alternative to Biden or supportive of Trump.

Through his charitable foundations, for the 2020 USA election Zuckerberg invested $400 million in vote harvesting in six critical states to swing the election to Biden and the Democrats.

Well, Zuckerberg’s wealth and power, through the manipulation allowing Biden to become President has cost dearly the USA, the world and ordinary individuals like us, in failed governance, foolish green policies to address the fantasy of CC, international disruption from the war in Ukraine, threats from emboldened China, North Korea and Iran, the rising cost of fuel and inflation, and the almost total breakdown of borders, law and order. What a return on investment of a mere corrupt $400m.

Analysis of each of those mentioned shows that attainment of great wealth delivering something worthwhile lends to notions of omnipotence, exercise of God-like power beyond scope and contempt for people like us. Although nobody is perfect, no wonder it’s hard to fit through the eye of a needle.

For us

Our ideas matter, especially when well informed. Emotion should not rule on matters of climate change. Facts are: there is no appreciable change in climate. Natural disasters are in decline, polar ice is stable and polar bears flourishing, the Great Barrier Reef is in robust good health. We should all continue to be mindful of caring for the environment, yet alert to the CC scams that suck money from taxpayers, increase the cost of energy and leave our energy and national security vulnerable.

Our opinions and votes matter if our country is to regain control over productivity, merit and reward for effort. A conversation, an email, a letter is our responsibility for addressing the excesses of wealth and power that diminish our value and relevance. We count.

Nothing and nobody in this life is perfect, especially when being confronted by unfamiliar experiences. Reflection of what is happening and how things could be better is usually worked out over time.

“How’s the hip?” asked the surgeon on a follow-up visit after surgery. “A bit hard to explain,” I said, trying to discern the difference between creaky joints and post-operative healing, “I’ve never had hip surgery before, nor been this old”. Recovery and rehabilitation was a new experience I had to learn to deal with.

Elderly amongst us are dealing with new experiences and changing relationships. Certainly in getting older, a noticeable shift in authority relationships occurs towards the following, more tech-savvy generations, who assume the mantle of responsibility for decision-making in families, work and community.

Not so long ago, these late mid-lifers with children off their hands and relatively healthy, would be free to enjoy later years unencumbered by elderly parents in decline. Just when they are relieved of responsibility for their own children, when the world of opportunity opens up for them, they may be challenged with the issue of how to care of elderly parents who’ve cared for them. Frustration is understandable.

Longer life, new lessons

Reciprocation is an important task of maturity. Willingness and good grace in meeting the needs of elderly parents who’ve given life and a platform for success are crucial elements of personal growth.

Continued growth to maturity for the elderly can also be found in their willingness and graciousness in acceptance of help offered, or not.

When and how to respond are dilemmas faced with rapid change resulting from accidents, illness and isolation. We are still working out patterns and policies of services and ways of communicating to see how effective efforts may be. For instance, elderly do not manage texts as well as person-to-person discussion: harm can be done in nuance lost through text. In any case, elders less acquainted with technology may not even have their mobile charged, switched on, or handy to use.

Lessons well done

Self-reliant elderly, who choose to down-size from the family residence to something more manageable in a retirement village, established for the comfort and enjoyment of peers, are best placed to live out their lives in optimum peace. Distanced from family responsibilities, mutual support and interests can be engaged at will. Personal posture and power can readily be maintained even in the face of encroaching physical and mental diminishments.

Choosing to leave the family home full of memories is probably the hardest decision, followed by what to let go. Challenging as they are, decisions such as these are further steps to maturity in ageing. Best to look at the limited time left to live to decide to take only what will be needed in the next stage.

Having a funeral photo taken early, while we still look presentable, leaves a more positive image of our life.

Lessons still to be learned

Not all families negotiate the challenges of ageing parents well. Busy, important, powerful adult offspring have shown to be cursory, terse and impatient in dealing with parents. They become impatient with the technology competence gap and slower pace of decision-making and moving that inconveniences their very important schedule.

Rushed decisions may be as minor as impromptu visits, changes to arrangements, demands for money, or exclusions from family events. Invariably elderly will need time to absorb the requests and fashion a response. Needing time does not mean elderly are stupid (although that is a possibility), as is often implied. Gracious silence does not mean approval of hustling.

Well-intentioned major life changing decisions like moving interstate or into a nursing home are not matters to be railroaded, though that is known to have happened. Adjustments to up-rooting of living arrangements, especially in inauspicious circumstances, are extremely hard to negotiate late in life. Affected with haste, bullying and inconsideration can mean later years end bitter, resentful and divisive.

Two areas of responsibility are necessary for maintaining civility, even love, during tenuous negotiations towards best end of life outcomes. Firstly, elderly themselves must give full consideration to how they expect to live out later years so they are ready to accept the possible inevitability of being cared for in assisted living. Secondly, responsible adult carers must develop respect and patience, even enjoyment of their parents who are part of their history and have given them life. Merely hastening their passage to be relieved of the burden of care or to reap the assets is a common, yet shameful approach, a poor lesson for those who come after. Powerful adult children will also age.

History

Many will be dismayed by attacks on our history: condemnation of key contributors like Captain Cook, Cecil Rhodes, Winston Churchill, defacing statues; burning books no longer judged acceptable according to today’s woke standards of equity, race, climate change, colonisation or gender. Quite unfairly, people are cancelled, discredited and isolated for living or speaking their truth.

Similar attitudes are exercised against elderly when judged by powerful midlife adult children who’ve failed to mature to accept elderly parents as they now are. History cannot be changed. In order to mature, adult children must move on from childhood recollections of how unfair life was for them (in their ‘story’), to accept life as it is now. Harsh judgements made against parents who operated in the context of their own history and values of the time are out of place today. Adult maturity means acceptance of reality, of people, with all their limitations. Blame is a function of immaturity, little different from burning Shakespeare and Enid Blyton, and about as much use.

Lessons to survive and flourish

Everyone, including the elderly, need to feel useful, valued and accepted for who they are. Gary Chapman’s 1992 book The Five Love Languages gives a clue about how that might be achieved:

• Quality time: means willing, cheerful presence without the urgency to rush off;
• Words of affirmation: are crucial to the mental wellbeing of someone feeling isolated;
• Physical touch: becomes ever more important for those whose only contact with other humans may be their doctor;
• Acts of service: Physical limitations may mean assistance is required with some tasks;
• Gift giving: Perhaps becomes less important at later life stage, excepting small things to brighten a day.

A sense of humour in the elderly and their adult children is a great tolerance-inducing tension relief. While Ricky Gervais may not be everyone’s cup of tea, his Netflix series, After Life and Derek, were to me, funny, insightful glimpses of life in later years.

Gratitude is owed to those adult children who try to do their best for ageing and perhaps difficult parents, providing thoughtful, useful time and service to improve life, especially when delivered in a spirit and manner of acceptance, tolerance and patience.

Therein are today’s lessons for longer life to enjoy in peace and harmony. Tell me yours.

In Economics 101 we learn that marginal changes in the beginning can affect major financial outcomes in the long run. So it is with behaviours. Life traits are multipliers as we experience love, hate, kindness, jealousy, cheerfulness, greed and lies.

Lying

Telling one lie impels the telling of more until the circumstances become self-consuming. Lies may be omission of important information or commission to gain advantage over others; false judgement; or to attain favour. Habitual lying is as compulsive as any addiction and just as destructive.

Being honest requires courage and humility, willingness to admit fault and take responsibility for wrong done purposely or inadvertently. Having admitted wrong and apologised, allows us to move on, learning from the experience, to do better in future. In that way, honesty is a life multiplier, giving example, encouraging others to do likewise and never having to look back.

Sooner or later, a reckoning for lies occurs. All the controls and mandates stipulated by unelected bureaucrats during COVID without disclosing the science are being challenged by people who lost their jobs, their loved ones and businesses. The groundswell is beginning. Fauci is not science.

Expect that another groundswell of protest, recrimination and compensation to be mounted over the dishonest claims of climate change and cheaper renewables. Facts: Nobody controls the weather. CO2 is an essential plant food. Most do their best to look after the environment.

Any lifecycle business case for cheaper renewables fails at every point: mining to produce essential inputs; manufacturing in China, transport by fossil fuelled vehicles; destruction of landscape ecology; loss of valuable productive land; maintenance and end use costs; not recyclable, going to landfill; cost of demolition and disposal; additional subsidies for transmission grid to remote sites; opportunity cost of failing to invest in other more reliable energy and social needs like housing; loss of manufacturing; vulnerable sovereignty. In fact the sheer weight of all-consuming, all compounding feel-good lies about climate change must soon bring the gravy train to a halt. China doesn’t care about such virtue signalling. I’d prefer housing with reliable energy – as if we were a first world country. As if!

The ultimate aim to decarbonise the economy, depriving people of the very innovations that have advanced our way of life, means taking us back to the dark ages. Reading Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book, Apricot Jam, is a stark reminder of the hollowness of dictatorial grand plans like Climate Change and Communism. Solzhenitsyn wrote how first they came for the men, then chopped down the apricot tree from which was made the jam of the title, then came for the grain, then seed grain, women, children and animals, so the means of production and survival so long practised by  farmers were lost to the grand plan. People starved. ‘In 50 years, this land will be flourishing’ the soldier remarked. Revisiting 50 years later, the people were still without bread. Why expect anything different from the CC dictatorship?

Anastasia Palaszczuk’s Environmental Protection and Other Legislation Act for Queensland reaches much the same multiplier. First the land will be taken – more land for national parks (to become unmanaged fire and vermin havens); then the means of production is to be reduced – fewer animals allowed on farms; wind and solar panels are approved blights on the landscape; no mines, coal or gas fired power. Unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats to determine, STASI like, who can do/produce and what. Already inflation is rising, power becoming all but unaffordable as it is unreliable, water will soon be at a premium, food shortages continue, quality of education declining and health services are congested. No way to run a state!

Hatred

I’ve never understood hatred can be perpetrated by so many, sometimes against people they do not even know. So much effort to maintain the rage! Social media is awash with hatred spewed out by the ill-informed to satisfy existing bias, ideology or political bent, usually to destroy challenges to power and privilege. Self-reflection would be too painful. Instead hatred multiplied by bots.

Manifestations of hatred occur in families, workplaces, schools and political arenas. It’s way more comfortable to point over there with accusations and blame, than to rankle in discomfort at facing truth, having to make adjustments before being forced to do so by circumstances.

Too often I’ve seen families destroyed when one in the family marries a partner who lies, manipulates and distorts to divide the person from the family of origin. Malevolence is multiplied when the balancing influence of families is lost, along with contact with grandchildren weaponised for greater impact.

In Australia, Coalition Prime Ministers Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison ran the gauntlet of hatred for such facile accusations as checking a watch, eating an onion and taking a week’s holiday.

Hatred of Donald Trump is manifest in the relentless legal attempts to obliterate him and anyone associated with him for having the gall to win the 2016 election, then implementing policies beneficial to the American people, as he said he would.

So consumed with hatred is the Democratic machine and its mouthpieces in tech and media, that they boastfully “fortified” the 2020 election for a Biden win, overturning Trump’s policies that saw America self-sufficient in energy, no wars, adversaries contained, higher employment and wages and secure border.

Biden and Democrat hatred of Trump has multiplied disadvantage for US citizens and the rest of the free world. Biden presided over an inglorious exit from Afghanistan, Russia has invaded Ukraine, China threatens Taiwan, Iran threatens everyone, and little Rocket Man in North Korea prances his ballistic missiles. USA is no longer self-sufficient in energy, begging rogue nations for consideration. Over 2 million illegal immigrants have crossed the southern border; 107k citizens have died from fentanyl poisoning; inflation is rampant; people continue to die from COVID. Even remedies for COVID mentioned by Trump as beneficial were withheld from Florida, a Republican state, where they were being put to effect saving lives. Death of your own people is of lesser value than hatred of Trump and maintaining power.

Demonising a person is a tool of hatred justifying destruction. That’s how the Department of Justice in the USA has been relentlessly weaponised against Trump by the Biden Democrats, even before Trump was elected, during his presidency and in the 19 months since. Consider why the same FBI agent has been responsible for the FBI engineered “white supremacist” kidnap threat against Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan; FBI operatives videoed urging protesters to enter the Capitol building on January 6; and in charge of raid organised on Trump’s Mar-o-Lago home.

See a pattern here? Hatred multiplied and compounded blinds people in Agencies like the FBI to the harm they do to targets and also to their own reputation from unequal, unjust administration of the law. As Stephen Covey asserts in his book The Speed of Trust, loss of trust can bring down governments, organisations, families and businesses.

Love  

Love is perhaps an even greater multiplier in that the more one gives, the more love there is. Love is infinite. Patience, kindness, cheerfulness, thoughtfulness, respect and good manners indicative of love can sometimes be thin on the ground, yet light up the day and multiply the joy in the life of those so blessed. Even more so when love offered is well received.

What I love weddings, over and above special clothes for the special occasion, is the abundance of love that drew a couple together to commit to each other before a gathering of people who love them. Wishes of hope, love and companionship abound.

Yet love does not end on the wedding day: love grows manifest in the endurance of a relationship, and in the children, grandchildren and if lucky, great-grandchildren, produced as a consequence of the love of two people. In later years looking back on the history of family one can see the strength of generative love multiplied through the vicissitudes of life, especially when lived honestly.

Tech oligarchs have become uber-wealthy in the internet era as platform technology enables seamless reach into global audiences to reap rich returns.

Yet financial success depends on a number of factors, only one of which is personal smarts. Others are: timing, luck, other people’s ideas purloined and prior technical platforms. Questionable origins shadow Microsoft and Facebook as well as acquisitions. Legal challenge against tech giants appears insurmountable, as the innovator of what has become Google maps discovered.

Under prevailing values attainment of uber-wealth, by bequest or smarts, elevates a person to an elite level of prestige that is a multiplier of admiration and opportunity, where sins tend to be ignored or forgiven; few criticise. Favourable narrative prevails. Differing earns cancelling, ghosting, loss of job, reputation and personal threats. Just ask Trump.

Sanctimony of the moneyed  

With their income and assets often exceeding the GDP of many countries, oligarchs begin to wonder what to do with wealth they cannot possibly spend on themselves. More money and power attracts, especially when clothed in the virtue signalled by addressing climate change, “the great moral challenge of our times”.

Promoting and investing in “solutions” to climate change allows them to preen to the global elite at Davos World Economic Forum and at Glasgow COP 26 just how much good they are doing and how virtuous they are. Never mind that 400 private jets line the tarmac at the same time our energy bills increase at an accelerating rate to service their indulgence.

How often have we been told that the science of climate change is “settled”; yet any scientist of worth knows that the very basis of science is challenge to hypothesis, leading to deeper knowledge and greater innovation.

Science is never settled; only the acceptable political narrative is settled, as we found out about COVID as the lies, betrayals and cruelty become exposed.

Climate catastrophe is no different. Many wealthy people were sucked into the advertised Teal election narrative of real action on climate change by what leading journalist Janet Albrectson called posh thickos. For them an increase in the energy bill is of little consequence. Even Simon Holmes `a Court  investment of $200 million in the Teal campaign is small bikkies for a return in political power and revenue from the $20 billion gravy train of subsidies and incentives in renewables. As Queensland Senator Gerrard Rennick said, “I keep following the science and all I find is money”.

As a reality check:

• The climate is always changing; whether humans are responsible for the minuscule levels of CO2 remains debatable. Even whether CO2 is responsible for climate change is debatable.
• Climate change has become a cultish marketing ploy to marshal global control, sanctimony and money. Fear has driven evolution from greenhouse gas, to global warming, accelerating to climate change/crisis/catastrophe.
• Renewables are only possible with despised mining, manufacture and transport and huge taxpayer subsidies: one windmill needs 300 tons concrete, 220 tons steel, lithium, cobalt and oil.
• Lifespan of renewables is between 10-20 years despoiling landscape and ecology. No satisfactory disposal methods have yet been developed.
• $billions in taxpayer subsidies for “renewables” expands as calls for further subsidies for transmission to the grid. Next will be subsidies for demolition and disposal.
• South Australia, Europe, Great Britain and California are living examples that renewables are unreliable. Base load power (from coal, gas or nuclear) is essential for a 1^st world economy to keep the lights on, affordable and making stuff.
• Renewables are supposed to produce cheaper energy, yet have resulted in rapidly accelerating price rises on top of the double whammy of taxpayer subsidies. Paying twice for unreliable, expensive energy is not only foolish, but also a security risk.

Green Murder

Professor Ian Plimer, geologist, earth scientist and prolific author, has published a new book, Green Murder: a life sentence without parole. A blurb for the book explains the futility of pursuit of Net Zero:

It has never been shown that human emissions of the gas of life drive global warming. Large bodies of science that don’t fit the narrative have been ignored by IPCC, COP and self-interested scientists paid by taxpayers. A huge subsidised industry of intermittent unreliable wind and solar electricity has been created based on unsubstantiated science. The same hucksters now want subsidised hydrogen, costly inefficient EVs, subsidised mega-batteries and other horribly expensive tried and failed schemes to impoverish people, create unemployment, transfer wealth and enrich China. Germany, Texas, California and the UK had a glimpse of Net Zero with blackouts, astronomically high electricity costs and hundreds of deaths. We once had reliable cheap electricity and now that governments have gone green, we are heading for hard economic times.

In this book I charge the greens with murder. They murder humans who are kept in eternal poverty without coal-fired electricity. They support slavery and early deaths of black child miners. They murder forests and their wildlife by clear felling for mining and wind turbines. They murder forests and wildlife with their bushfire policies. They murder economies producing unemployment, hopelessness, collapse of communities, disrupted social cohesion and suicide.

They murder free speech and freedoms and their takeover of the education system has ended up in the murdering of the intellectual and economic future of young people. They terrify children into mental illness with their apocalyptic death cult lies and exaggerations. They try to divide a nation. They are hypocrites and such angry ignorant people should never touch other people’s money. (or children, I would add).

The greens are guilty of murder. The sentence is life with no parole in a cave in the bush enjoying the benefits of Net Zero.

Sanctimony at our cost

People wanting to do the right thing sign up to support candidates touting they will save the world by buying into the climate catastrophe cult. Doubled energy bills for unreliable supply soon bring a reality check that the workers and poor cannot afford such a ridiculous frolic, while the sanctimonious wealthy bask in comfort, virtue and money.

Energy security is paramount to sovereign security, yet self-interest (money, virtue and political power) prevails:

• Mike Cannon-Brookes (Atlassian billionaire) bidding on AGL to hasten closing coal fired power generators, opening up vast solar farms and putting up the price of energy
• Simon Holmes a Court funding the Teals to swing the election against sensible energy policies
• Joe Biden shutting down the Keystone pipeline, leases, oil and gas and production that enabled the USA to be a self-sufficient net exporter; now begging rogue states for production – all move the population forcibly to “green energy”, while gas and food prices double.
• Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook tipping $400million into vote harvesting to ensure his preferred candidate, Biden, got over the line, so he can feel good about saving the planet.
• Bill Gates posturing at WEF Davos on control of global populations by unelected bureaucrats with surveillance algorithms under the proposed WHO pandemic control push
• Jack Dorsey of Twitter, who cancelled the President of the USA and manipulated algorithms to influence an election, yet kept the Mullahs of Iran on his platform. A takeover bid by Elon Musk sent staff and the Twitterati into conniptions
• Twiggy Forrest who has done a lot of good with his billions, gets carried away on “green hydrogen” requiring even more taxpayer subsidies to bring to realisation.

Good on these philanthro-capitalists who have made a fortune providing goods, service and employment. Globally they are recognised and richly rewarded. However, they have only one vote, same as us. Our knowledge and opinions, especially when well informed, are every bit as valuable as theirs.

Best if they stuck to their lane, listening more than pontificating, recognising the wisdom and rights of others. They are neither elected nor accountable.

Free and open debate is a better solution than cancelling, gaslighting and dismissing “deplorables”. Money breeds sanctimony rather than good sense.