Make Australia Great Again!

It’s not hard to make the argument that on many fronts Australia has regressed in recent years. Our standard of living in real terms has diminished over the term of the Albanese government. Whilst our GDP, masked by record migration might have increased, our percapita GDP has fallen. We have endured high levels of inflation […]

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Breaking Through the Woke Barrier

Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist. In his 1979 book Distinction, Bourdieu introduced the concept of symbolic capital. In contrast with more conventional notions of resources, such as wealth and material assets, Bourdieu argued that symbolic capital is the resource available to an individual on the basis of prestige, celebrity status and public recognition. A […]

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The Palestine Dilemma

On 7 October 2023, Hamas terrorists emerged from Gaza to commit an horrendous atrocity against Israeli civilians. This deadly incursion has been well documented so I won’t elaborate on the gruesome details. Inevitably Israel responded with deadly force in order to deter further aggression and to rescue the civilian hostages that Hamas had kidnapped during […]

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The Downside of a University Education

At the age of eighteen, I left my family home in Charters Towers to start an engineering degree at James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville. In those days it was quite an extraordinary thing to do! In my high school years I can only remember two students in the cohort that I knew ahead of […]

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Altruism and Identity


I have often written about the tensions we face as human beings, to on the one hand assert our specialness and separateness but on the other hand, because we are social animals, to want to belong. Out of this tension our egos have conspired to manufacture identity politics which is built about the notion that […]

November 12, 2016

Free Speech – Regaining the “No-Go” Areas


Last week I wrote my essay focussing on climate change and the growth of renewable energy. One of the reasons I did so was that in a previous essay I had decried the impacts of section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act as unduly restricting free speech. Often when we are trying to have serious […]

November 5, 2016

Some Inconvenient Truths


I had a long career in the Electricity Industry. I was a leading proponent for renewable energy and concerned to be as environmentally responsible as I could. But it seems to me that the debate about these things has often been skewed by those taking idealistic, extreme and sometimes uninformed positions. Let me give you […]

October 29, 2016

What Can I Say?


As I have written elsewhere, in this age of political correctness, meaningful communications is mired by an unfortunate asymmetry. Those delivering a message must do so in a very constrained and unemotional way to minimise the likelihood that they will be called out for giving offence. Consequently contentious issues are skirted around and some not […]

October 22, 2016

Democracy on the Ropes


Democracy on the Ropes Anyone who was masochistic enough to watch any of the Clinton/Trump debates must be shaking their heads in bewilderment at the state of Western democracy. It is appalling that the world’s most powerful democracy has come to this, forced to make a choice for President between an uninspiring Hillary Clinton, whose […]

October 15, 2016

Mundine Right on Indigenous Domestic Violence


As you would have observed from many previous essays, I have had a long time interest in indigenous affairs and in particular the need for Australians to address indigenous disadvantage. Unfortunately we have made few inroads into addressing indigenous disadvantage. The reasons behind this are complex. But basically, although there are many indigenous families now […]

October 8, 2016

Taking Things Seriously


In my little book Augustus Finds Serenity, the sage Takygulpa Rinpoche has been asked to give advice to a religious community. Among other things he tells the assembled throng: Do not take life too seriously. The glue that holds our communities together best is made from shared joy and good humour. Just as we are […]

September 30, 2016

Identifying with Difference


I thought that old age was supposed to bring us wisdom. But in my case it seems to bring more confusion. I must confess that I am dumbfounded by some of the social trends that I witness. Those of you that have followed my meanderings in my blog essays over the years would be aware […]

September 24, 2016

Parenting and ADHD


I suppose this is a sort of “trigger warning”. I intend my blog this week to be provocative. If you don’t want to be challenged best you continue no further! And what is the confronting issue I am going to attempt to deal with this week? It is parenting. Now I am not going to […]

September 17, 2016

The Sad Demise of Mythology


It is interesting that today the use of the word “myth” has a pejorative nature about it. We call something a myth when it seems factually untrue and deliberately designed to mislead. To so misuse the notion of myth is to do it a great injustice. The ancient Greeks made the distinction between Mythos and […]

September 9, 2016